Lauren Fox, along with a cavalcade of contributors (myself amongst them, though my role was fairly minor) from J483/583, penned a lengthy discussion of our old friends at OSPIRG in today’s Oregon Daily Emerald. What should really be noted is the story behind the story. During the day on Wednesday, a couple of high-profile OSPIRG supporters came out of the proverbial woodwork to express their dissatisfaction with the piece.

According to Emerald Editor in Chief Nora Simon, OSPIRG Chapter Chair Charles Denson paid her a visit to her office at about 2 PM Wednesday expressing concerns about his quotes in the story. Denson explained that one of the students in the class had told him that the material was for a class project and would not be published elsewhere. He said that he thought his comments were “too frank” for wider publication. Simon said that while he did not make any requests, she felt that there was a tacit implication in the conversation that he did not want the Emerald to run the story.

Later on Wednesday, former ASUO Political Director Robert D’Andrea visited Fox. According to Fox, he stood next to her desk until she engaged him. They then retired to the Editor-in-Chief’s office, where D’Andrea reiterated Denson’s concerns about the piece. D’Andrea, like Denson, did not explicitly state that he wanted the Emerald to not run the story, and Fox described their conversation as “very friendly.” At the conclusion of their discussion, Fox asked D’Andrea if he was involved in OSPIRG. Fox said that D’Andrea replied by saying “How do you define being involved in OSPIRG?”

Fox brought these concerns to the class on Thursday and each student involved in the story indicated that, though they had indicated that the project was for class, they never promised that the material would not be published.

So the real question is this: Why are the head of OSPIRG and a former high ranking ASUO official, who is still thought to be actively involved in the current administration and will not confirm his involvement in OSPIRG, trying to influence the operations and editorial policy of the Oregon Daily Emerald?

Public affairs:

• Face-egg: Developing on the Riverfront may be more difficult for the UO after the University Senate unanimously censured the development, since the UO violated an ancient agreement that it would consult people and develop in a certain way (Emerald). Evidently UO cheese Richard Lariviere performed the time-tested leave-early maneuver at the Senate meeting, while the UO has already begun running red excavators on the site (KEZI). Or maybe it won’t make a difference. The UO and city seem to believe the agreement is no longer valid (Register-Guard). A UO Matters reader makes dark suggestions about why this was only discovered now, when it’s arguably too late, and an old newspaper clipping UO Matters unearths suggests the same concerns existed in 1986. The Eugene Weekly also chimes in.
• ASUO Police: There’s a lot of the usual dross in descriptions of the ASUO Senate meeting, but at one point, DPS’ police force expansion is discussed. ASUO Sen. Erin Altman questions the financial aspects of a larger DPS. In response: “The DPS officers attending the meeting said they were not out to create a large police force and they would return the money they didn’t need.” What? Is this a thing that works? What does this mean? (Emerald)
• OSPIRG: The Oregon Voice’s Noah DeWitt has hard questions for Kitty Piercy at an OSPIRG junket. (Oregon Voice)
• What do numbers mean? The ones describing OSU’s enrollment are now higher than the ones describing UO’s (Register-Guard).
• Racism: A guy came to town to talk about environmental racism. (Emerald)
• Scheduling oops: There’s a parade set to take place during the Civil War football game. (KMTR)

Some very interesting opinion articles are below the fold, and so is sports. (more…)

Public affairs:

• Archeology: Oregon Research Institute opponents say the development of the Riverfront Research Park development has violated a 1986 agreement (courtesy of UO Matters) requiring community input between the city and UO this whole time. It’s just nobody seemed to have a copy of the agreement on hand until anti-ORI activists uncovered it recently. The Eugene Weekly posted about this yesterday and I linked to it, but the import of the post did not penetrate the thick membranes of my skull (KVAL). Pretty much everyone who knows about architecture and the like seems to hate this thing (Emerald), which will make it one of many showdowns, seemingly, at the next UO Senate meeting, along with ones on parking, the post office closure, and policy seemingly regarding the Pacifica Forum. (UO Matters)
• Bootings: UO contract-toughs led 117 people from Autzen stadium during the Hated Huskies game. No word on how many were students, but I like to believe the number represents only well-heeled alumni with private boxes. (Register-Guard)
• Embarrassment, contd.: The University of Washington interim cheese, fresh from a contrite telephone conversation with UO cheese Lariviere, has demanded some grovelling from her athletic director after he publicly identified the UO’s academic spade as an embarrassing spade. UO mouths are staying shut. Maybe they are too embarrassed about their academics to talk. Down with candor, no? (Oregonian, Seattle Times, UW Daily)
• Meters: Business owners downtown are pretty happy with the city’s new parking policies, but the want more. (Emerald)
• Marshall backlash: In the 1940s and 1950s, we gave the Europeans a little help getting their economic house together and we’ve been answering for it ever since. Latest development: the gravity of some of those boatloads of dollar bills we shipped across the Atlantic back then is sucking two of the UO’s most promising students toward England. (Emerald)
• Invisible realms: Do you have problems in the invisible realm of human beings? There, evidently, you tell a doctor what’s wrong with you; the doctor then tells you a story and sends you on your way. (Emerald)

Opinion:

• Letters: The Guard’s mailbag includes someone who is in a searing rage over the UO’s driving on bike paths, while another letter writer accuses people who go to Israel of coming back brainwashed. An Emerald reader calmly spits on the paper’s anti-EmX editorial.
• Editorials: The Guard gushes with praise for the city’s new park purchase, but finds San Francisco’s kid’s meal toy ban ho-hum.
• The Emerald’s JoAnna Wendel ponders some miracles. Fucking turn-of-the-century Siberian explosions! How do they work? (Emerald blog)
• An elementary school kid’s mom cries bloody murder while the city’s schools cut their budgets.

Sports:

• Emerald freelancer Jackson Long continues a string of interviews with Oregon Football players, this time with multi-smasher Casey Matthews. Matthews comes across more as a clipped football automaton, which contrasts to the softer persona D.J. Davis revealed last week in response to Long’s questions. “It is hard to grow hair out; it is such mental discipline.” (Emerald)
• Oregon Volleyball player Kellie Kawasaki struggles to do her laundry. (Emerald)
• Ever wanted way more information than you could possibly stomach about Oregon Football fingertip-of-choice Nate Costa’s injury? Here’s a video containing that (KVAL). And Emerald sports-whippet Patrick Malee lauds the injured fingertip’s class (Emerald).
• Oregon Golf plummeted a rung in its competition. (Emerald)
• Oregon Wushu! The OC wrote about that issues ago, Ethos!

Public affairs:

• Red-face: The University of Washington sport-czar Scott Woodward apologized for calling UO academics “an embarrassment.” The basic idea, though, is something with which most people seem to agree: that the UO’s quest for sporting greatness, and the Xbox-equipped lockers that requires, is in jarring contrast to an academic side where professors are paid five figures less than those at the schools with which the UO claims to rub shoulders. (Oregonian, Seattle Times, Associated Press, AOL) An Oregonian blogger wonders if Nike, which clothes Woodward’s teams, will come down on him hard.
• Car money: The UO makes a killing on some parking spots it’s renting. (UO Matters)
• Land & money: Here’s a run-down of some of the building projects the UO’s undertaking. (Emerald)
• ASUO: Some ASUO senators don’t like the idea of banning bottled water. (Emerald)
• Strutting: A couple of jurnos who have been embedded in Afghanistan got a chance to spin their yarns Monday night. (Emerald)
• Archeology: Opponents of the Riverfront development want people to join them at the UO’s next planning meeting to oppose the development. (Weekly)

Opinion:

• The Emerald‘s JoAnna Wendel: CHEMISTRY IS LIKE MAGIC, BUT IT’S HARD!
• Letters: Kevin Mannix writes in to the Guard, while other readers decry the tyranny of daylight saving time and call Art Robinson a terrorist plot.
• Editorials: The Guard says it was Greg Kord and Wes Wagner, along with Democratic efforts in Portland, that won John Kitzhaber the gubernatorial race. And it says cars are driving fast and people are dying.
• A charter school director says our schools would improve if only we could improve our community. (Emerald)
• Reasons the UO thinks you should give it money: Papa R. came down to Eugene this weekend to visit his son, David R., and learn drinking games, and then he volunteered, after a couple of beers, at the Oregon Football-Hated Huskies game. GTF Katie D., who is excited by the idea of interning in South Africa, took her students to visit the state pen. Antonia D. had a difficult week of mid-terms and a relaxing weekend with her mother. Korrin B. is enthusiastic about her environment and discovered she could get a massage at the Health Center. (Online UO Begging Bowl)

Sports:

• With Oregon Football fingertip-of-choice Nate Costa absent, who does the UO have in the way of backup quarterbacks? (Emerald)
• Oregon Football scampering gong-tempter LaMichael James is on the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated. (KVAL)
• Emerald sports-lizard Robert Husseman takes us inside the post-match environment for journalists at Autzen Stadium.
• Oregon Soccer missed out on its tournament after defeats to Northern California schools. The OS season is now over. (Emerald)
• Oregon Golf is fifth in the tournament it’s currently at. (Emerald)

Public affairs:

• Old news: Somehow, I managed to miss UO cheese Richard Lariviere’s by-then ancient diagnosis with prostate cancer when I was putting together the last digest. I apologize for that if somehow my oversight led to your missing it too. So formalized is the vocabulary of offering sympathy in print when this sort of thing happens, that if I were to do so, I could only hope I was being sincere. Instead, in solidarity, since mustache-growth and fighting prostate cancer appear to have been equated by our culture now, I refuse to shave my upper lip until Lariviere is puttering around that office in good health again. The UO has promised Lariviere will recover swiftly and completely; Jim Bean will preside in the meantime. (Register-Guard, UO Matters, Associated Press, KTVL Medford, OC, Emerald)
• Shames: The University of Washington’s athletic director said this about the UO’s academics: “It’s an embarrassment what their academic institution is, and what’s happened to them as far as their state funding has gone. In my mind it’s a wonderful athletic facility but they’ve watched it at the expense of the university go really down.” Corr! Gah! (Sports by Brooks, UO Matters)
• Competitive medicine: Oregon blood banks are trying to harness the UO-OSU sports-hate to persuade us to try to outbleed our rivals. (Emerald)
• Car movements: Remember, Franklin’s going to be congested. (KVAL)
• Flooring and hardwoods: Over the weekend, a few journalists appear to have mistaken the Matthew Knight Arena floors for catnip. “Iconic … stories woven together … spectacular … innovative … unique … immediately recognizable … unlike anything in college basketball,” the Guard pants, adding “not orange” for good measure. “Art,” screams USA Today. (NESN, ESPN, etc.)

Opinion:

• Letters: The Guard‘s readers call for more suffering and less of the type of democracy that involves mail-in fliers. The Emerald indulges a Colorado resident’s desire for a brief weed-ramble.
• Editorials: The Guard makes some opaque noises about fiscal apocalypse, concluding that employment is more important than inflation; then it cheers on the possibility that state attorney generals might tear apart unscrupulous mortgage-foreclosers. The Emerald joins arms with EmX opponents.
• UO Matters criticizes the administration for not upgrading its computing sooner because of what it says about financial priorities.
• After years at the UO, Emerald editorial honcho Tyree Harris has finally met people who like their roommates. (Emerald blogs)
• UO student Teeona Williams blames income disparities for the disproportionate death toll breast cancer takes among black women. (Emerald)
• The director of a non-profit organization encourages people to adopt. (Register-Guard)
• Reasons the UO thinks you should give it money: Oregon Football gets Trafton B. a little misty eyed, and he also likes shooting pool. (UO’s online begging bowl)

Scene:

• There’s a new Oregon Voice out there, and I’m not going to give a bullet point to every article. OV honcho Noah DeWitt’s editor’s note (p. 2) bills it as “an alternative to the tired ethos (pun intended) of other campus journals.” I assume he means he believes half of his articles aren’t crudely written, his publication has demonstrated it is a viable target for advertisers, the editing has scrubbed and polished the text clean, ideas are not cribbed from other campus magazines, and the articles do not teeter on the edge of libel. If that’s his definition, the magazine is an utter failure. It is just another campus journal, subject to all the pitfalls that face the rest of them, and DeWitt’s holier-than-thou attitude is wholly unjustified, not that the Commentator’s holier-than-thou attitude is. But all things considered, it is actually a very good campus magazine.
• More OV: The best article in the issue is Grace Pettygrove’s (p. 18) about Lariviere’s proposal, which she rubbishes. She opens by criticizing the single worst article I ever wrote for the Emerald, which I’m fine with. Then she questions the degree of influence the proposal will give private donors. That’s something nobody, even Oregon’s most vigilant journalistic watchdog, Brent Walth, not only seems to have failed to ask, but seems not to have considered important. Who are these private donors meeting with candidates for the UO presidency telling them to privatize the school?
• Even more OV: Best of the rest of the articles: A hilarious, unhinged advice column (p. 6) that tought me a great deal about cats and flatulence. A biting critique of the school’s sports culture (p. 7). A jarring meditation on the subliminal promotion of cannibalism by cereal companies (p. 4). Worst of them: Tyler Pell’s article about Jews in campus media (p. 4-5), not because it mentions Lyzi Diamond’s religion (who cares, although the pull-quote is kind of non-classy), but because Pell doesn’t actually do the journalism to learn that the editor-in-chief of the Emerald is Jewish, or the writing to actually make a point (Unless he’s trying to satirize the laziness of people who make the Jews-in-media pronouncements, in which case it doesn’t come through clearly enough). An article about skateboarding that appears to be a Q and A with the writer’s interview subject when it is in fact a Q and A with the writer (p. 24)
• The Emerald’s Andrew Hitz starts comparing Restoration-era fops to modern hipsters. You think you know where he’s going with it, after a very redemptive column about hipsters and their obsession with American Indians a couple of weeks ago; then he changes course and appears to cheer the rise of the Tea Party. Were his intentions ironic? You be the judge.
• A string quartet has been in town! There was a play based on a movie! A movie was well-cast! A band you haven’t heard of is coming to town and you might not have the money to see it! People are pleased with (Emerald)
• Look at some Halloween costumes! Woody Allen’s new movie is better than Jackass 3D! Mushrooms are food! (Ethos)

Sports:

• Oregon Football’s fun was ruined by a Hated Huskies team that refused to play the “hapless victim.” Getting iron-tipped gazelle Kenjon Barner back was pretty chill for OF, but losing designated finger Nate Costa was felt by all to be kind of lame. (Emerald)
• There was a conference Double-Yoo for Oregon Volleyball this weekend. Then it got an Ell. (Emerald)
• Oregon Basketball (W) coach Paul Westhead gives his players a week to get it right after a jammy game against the Hated Warriors. “It might be an appropriate wake-up call,” he said. (Emerald)
• Oregon Basketball (M) got off to a shaky preseason start against the Hated Beacs. (Emerald)

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)

Public affairs:

• Democracy: We now have someone we can call the “once-and-future governor,” and there are deadlock-like situations in both houses of the state legislature. The Emerald has ambiguously confrontational language. The Guard has racing metaphors, the Oregonian is not stingy.
• Democracy (II): Relatively few students vote, probably, a case somewhat overstated here. (Weekly)
• Equality: Despite some promising indicators, mostly women get a pretty raw deal when it comes to getting and keeping jobs. (Emerald)
• Escaping the gutter: The Emerald features a program by St. Vincent de Paul that tries to get homeless ‘Nam vets back on their feet. (Emerald)
• Verdigris: The Emerald’s Franklin Bains is introduced to some people who like the new position the ASUO has created. (Emerald)
• ASUO: There was a Senate meeting. Some people got the titles they were looking for, others were denied. Some groups got money. Everyone, at one point or another, got miffed, probably at its root because of the futility of the exercise. (OC, Emerald)

Opinion:

• Emerald opinion honcho Tyree Harris tells another tale of woe, this one the first in a two-parter about a young woman who was once addicted to amphetemines. (Emerald)
• Letters: Weekly readers call for an end to National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the reinstatement of the draft, etc. The Guard’s bag is full of people questioning various aspects of the paper’s journalistic taste.
• A Eugene activist wants us to make her gay daughter’s life better. (Register-Guard)
• Migrant fruit-picker turned activist Juan Carlos Valle’s seemingly inspiring and compelling personal story is silenced by his limp diction and generic talking points as he attempts to make a case for the DREAM Act. (Weekly)
• Editorials: The Weekly thinks growing UO enrollment is good, and has some opaque things to say about football. The Guard calls Oregon voters spendthrifts for voting for Measure 73, but applauds them on their other votes; wonders how Barack Obama and the new Republicans will get on; believes there is a parallel between the County Commission election results and the national ones.
• A burst of admirable self-deprecation from the Weekly.

Scene:

• The Weekly has published its annual best-of list. Civil Rights litigant/geriatric farting hippie Frog is named the best local celebrity and KWVA DJ Rev. Marc Time is called the “non-politician doing the most for Eugene.” Cinema studies GTF DJ Foodstamp is called the best DJ, but campus bars are almost entirely absent from the nightlife section. Adjunct instructor Jennifer Burns Levin is called its best blogger. Jeremiah Masoli is third in the sports personality stakes, with LaMichael James first.
• On an organic food program: “The food has to look good, taste good and be of feasible labor.” On “Love’s Labour’s Lost”: “it[‘]s really like middle[-]schoolers in a camp” On a band made up of UO professors: “It’s often the music you don’t want to listen to.” On tubas: “Epic. Awesome.” (Emerald)

Sports:

• Seattle Times columnist Bud Withers has a pretty uproarious column about what a broke-ass team Oregon Football spent decades being before The Pick. (Seattle Times)
• Oregon Basketball (W) tonked the Hated Bearcats and OB(W) honcho Paul Westhead got jazzy. (Emerald, Register-Guard)
• A Seattle radio personality describes Oregon Football as “Freakin’ Star Trek,” en route to emphasizing that the Hated Huskies, especially without their precious throwing numen Jake Locker, are not that good. (Register-Guard)
• OF crusher Kenjon Barner is OK now and Kenny Wheaton will be at the Hated Huskies game. (Register-Guard)
• The Pacific 12 conference will make for more competitive running-for-long-distances. (Emerald)
• Emerald sports-honcho Lucas Clark writes out his NBA predictions.

FYI: These will again become regular. I took a break Monday because I didn’t have access to a computer.

Public affairs:

• Democracy: Some results are in, others not as I type this. Probably, as Rockne says in the post below, the New  York Times is the source for that. Here’s Oregon on the NYT site, and here’s the whole shebang. Here‘s the Emerald’s article.
• Employment: UO Matters has posted a copy of illusion Randy Geller’s resume, as well as a photo. Interesting that he got the resume the same day he bashed the new public record office’s funding.
• Marketing: The UO looks to triangulate a branding strategy for the key Pakistani market, settles on prized saves-you-from-freezing marketshare. (Emerald, Register-Guard)
• The Worldly: An author came to convince UO students to save the world. (Emerald)
• Cinema: Some people recently met to get all hot and bothered about sound in movies. (Emerald)

Opinion:

• Emerald viewpoint-mouthpiece Matt Tellam compares those who oppose Measure 74 to a South Park character.
• Letters: A student chides the Emerald for not reporting on EPD’s Halloween-night truncheons, while another says the Emerald should get candidates’ positions “in writing.” The Guard’s have paranoid thoughts about campaign money and shipping metaphors.
• Editorials: The Guard wants energy reform packaged differently, and also chides the state for not giving the Oregonian information about people drawing six-figure pensions.
• Emerald viewpoint-bromide JoAnna Wendel appears to satirize some of the hazards of Halloween, and also advises against superstition.
• A UO student studies abroad, tries to trace her family roots, has a frustrating time of it, discovers Ireland has very little to do with her. Another one meets his heroes and asks them questions off a small list. (Ethos)
• The chairperson of Eugene’s Public Art Committee has some ra-ra for art and attempts to make more of it. (Register-Guard)
• Reasons the UO thinks you should give it money today: Trafton B. reflects his Halloween costume from last year and looks ahead to a new one, and also invites Californians to attend UO.

Sports:

• Here‘s a fascinating interview with an Oregon Football player by an Emerald freelancer, who humanizes the guy in a way that many people who interview sports folks don’t bother to. (Emerald)
• Now that Hated Huskies throwing numen Jake Locker is set to miss the next football game with rib-ouch, OF’s not thinking as much about stopping him. (Emerald) In fact, OF’s being pretty blase about the whole playing-the-Hated-Huskies thing in the first place. (Register-Guard)
• Oregon Basketball (W) is starting up again. (Emerald)
• Oregon Rugby (W) overcame a size deficit to best the Hated Jesters, in an article that contains a lot of esoteric rugby jargon. (Emerald)

Public affairs:

• Uncle Sam: It’s Election Day, not that that has the same significance in Oregon. You guys really miss out on the sweltering elementary school cafeterias and grouchy retirees scowling as they run the point of their pencils up and down the voter registry looking for your name. The long lines, you know them not!
• Handicapping: It’s hard to tell who’s even in the lead anymore for governor. (Emerald)
• Ballooning: The “freshman fifteen” should really be called the “freshman three-to-six,” the Emerald reports.
• Money-dollops: The UO has received $50,000 for something folklore-related but not entirely explicit in the Emerald’s article. (Emerald)
• Beards for cancer: Some people won’t be shaving this month. It’s for cancer. (Emerald)

Opinion:

• Emerald viewpoint-bromide JoAnna Wendel considers the UO’s zebrafish lab. “Zebrafish don’t require excessive luxury.” One imagines zebrafish settling for vinyl interiors rather than real leather. One also begins to wonder why we don’t ever hear about scientific research at the UO that does not involve zebrafish. Is there none being done? Is it too embarrassing to talk about?
• Letters: In the Guard, a call for mass exodus and a thank you note to UO students for being nice on Halloween.
• Editorials: The Guard just wants to give a big hand to all the candidates out there. You’re all winners. The local paper also laments the likely failure of Washington state’s soda tax ballot initiative.
• The executive director of the UO’s Sexual Assault Support Services says Measure 73 is a crock of shit. (Ethos)
• Guard viewpoint-softy Bob Welch answers people’s questions about various fences and signs.
• Community member Roger Gray takes issue with the terminology used to describe a part of Eugene to which the town’s black residents were once exiled in the Guard.
• Emerald blogger Luisa Anderson apologizes for not blogging more. (Emerald Opinion Blog)

Scene:

• The new Kanye West video is causing library problems for one Voice staffer.

Sports:

• Emerald sports-lizard Robert Husseman focuses on another in the litany of problems with sports: scissor lifts.
• Injury has been kind to Oregon Football this season and cruel to Hated Huskies throwing numen Jake Locker, which will be a relief for OF. (Register-Guard)
• On OF recruiting: “Eugene … a good sized city with some stuff too do but not too much stuff to get caught up in, that’s safe and where they can play great football and get a great education.” (Emerald)
• OF players not that excited about their ranking, OF clay pigeon Jeff Maehl scoops a gong, and just because OF will be on ABC doesn’t necessarily mean a jackpot for the UO. (Register-Guard)
• Also: Injury news on Oregon Basketball (M).

Public Affairs

• Cellophane: Many people see the UO’s refusal to let people talk to its new legal honcho, or even know what he looks like, as a betrayal of the transparency UO cheese Richard Lariviere has promised. They’re reading the tea-leaves wrong. Here’s the truth: Randy Geller doesn’t actually exist. People don’t know this, but ex-UO cheese Dave Frohnmayer has an extensive and beloved collection of handmade sock puppets. He named his favorite Randy Geller, after pro-wrestler Randy Savage and spoon-bender Uri Geller, his two favorite celebrities*. He loved it so much he decided to appoint it to his General Counsel’s office. But two years ago, it tragically came apart in the wash. Frohnmayer was so attached to it, the UO administration agreed he couldn’t be allowed to know, so they have been pretending it still exists to preserve his feelings. The recent promotion was an attempt to perpetuate the ruse. UO officials believed nobody would notice. But it has all backfired in their faces and become a little embarrassing. Seriously, has anybody ever met Randy Geller? (KEZI)
• Bacchanalia: The Eugene Police are readying their truncheons in case the combination of Halloween and Saturday’s Oregon Football/Hated Trojans match will produce a human tempest of epic proportions, but seem less apocalyptic in their demeanor than they were in the last such story. (Register-Guard)
• Intersex: A professor hosted a talk about it this week. (Emerald)
• ASUO: The ASUO confirmed one new senator meaningless title-holder and didn’t confirm another. (Emerald)
• Gated Suburban Paranoia: The Emerald’s Mat Wolf visits a deserted squatter camp. (Emerald)

Opinion

• Emerald word-hacksaw Tyree Harris tells the dictionary definition of a horror story about a UO student’s awful childhood.
• Letters: Every Thursday is Christmas day for letters-to-the-editor fans because the Eugene Weekly comes out. This one contains so much hatred for Art Robinson, the Eugene Weekly and the electoral process. The Guard‘s mailbag has bile for the Lane County Commissioners, LTD and NPR.
• Editorials: The Emerald thinks arming DPS wouldn’t be worth the money. The Guard wants the government to help people refinance their mortgages, and thinks the Lane County Commissioners kind of made a spectacular boo-boo with their new water rules.
• Eco-idealist Jan Spencer wants you to do so many eco-things to make the planet an eco-utopia

Scene

• This probably has all the information you need. (Eugene Weekly)
• Want to carve the homelessness out of pumpkins? What do they do in countries where Halloween hasn’t been invented yet? Ever wondered how to make muffins? As whom will you disguise yourself? (Emerald)
• Want to see youth moving back and forth in a darkened club? (Voice)

Sports

• The Hated Trojans’ wily fox of a defensive coordinator says Oregon Football’s offense has him stumped. (Register-Guard)
• Oregon Rowing exists in a whirlwind of five-figure sums and early bedtimes. (Emerald)
• Pac-10 conference coaches agree: the two key matchups in the Oregon Football/Hated Trojans game? Oregon Football offense/Hated Trojans defense and Oregon Football defense/Hated Trojans offense.
• Oregon Basketball (M) has the highest graduation rate in its conference. “I’m positive about it,” lied an obviously very disappointed UO athletic honcho. Oregon Football and Oregon Running (M), though, are rock-bottom. (Register-Guard)
• Oregon Running-Long-Distances (W) is trying to win a trophy. “I believe, with every ounce of my being, that those kids are truly interchangeable,” their coach said. (Register-Guard)
• Here are some Pac-10 conference–related snippets. (Emerald)
• Emerald sports word-fiddler Lucas Clark puzzles over a professional basketball team from Miami, Fla. (Emerald)

* You think I’m making this up? Ask him.**

** He will tell you I’m definitely making this up.

Public Affairs

• Stampedes: Huge spikes in enrollment at Oregon University System schools. Some schools, such as Portland State, are admitting they are bursting at the seams. Other officials spew on-message refuse into the winds of conventional wisdom. “I am not a huge believer in the ‘enrollment is up because the economy is down’ idea … (and) I like to think it is more about the educational value we offer.” (Emerald)
• Symbols: A logo has been unveiled for the new basketball temple. (KVAL, KEZI, Register-Guard, ESPN)
• Money rodeo: Whoever wins the Oregon treasurer’s race will have to do some budget-wrangling. (Emerald)
• Handcuffs: The EPD Party Patrols gave out a lot of citations this weekend, while Autzen Stadium’s blue-shirts also kicked out more people than ever before. (Register-Guard)
• Needles: Ever thought something about the flu shot? It’s probably not true, according to an Emerald reporter. (Emerald)

Opinion

• Left-leaning Emerald columnist Matt Tellam wants you to know that, if you vote Republican, you could die in a fiery crash at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
• Emerald satirist JoAnna Wendel wonders if, perhaps, canvassers might not react so well to people canvassing them.
• UO Matters giggles at the qualifications for a new Event Manager at Matt Court.
• Letters: One Emerald letter-writer impugns Amelie Rousseau’s motives and wants us to spend money on trees, and another wants you to vote for the thing for which he is campaigning. Ron Wyden’s campaign managers call a member of the Jim Huffman campaign out in print and Eugeneans wax muzzy headed about systems of government in the Guard’s mail section.
• An LTD driver defends the EmX. (Register-Guard)
• Editorials: The Guard gets wry without saying much about Washington’s proposed income tax and the possibility Texas will steal the state’s business, and defends certain logging.
• Reasons the UO thinks you should give it money today: This week, Anita D. of Berkely, Calif., had a gut feeling about the UO and wrote her first grant recently. Meanwhile, Katie D. enjoyed working with anti–death penalty activist Helen Prejean, then went off the grid for a couple days. (The UO begging bowl)

Scene

Sports

• Top Emerald sports-hack Patrick Malee meditates on his first trip to College Game Day and has unusual words of encouragement for Hated Trojans fans. Malee also writes an NBA preview making fun of player Steve Nash’s hair. (Emerald)
• Oregon Football is focusing on the details needed to beat the Hated Trojans. As in, how many times can you mention the fact they can’t compete in a bowl this season before it hurts? What does Matt Barkley most hate to hear his mother called? Are Hated Trojans players, at this point, desensitized to the mention of Trojan condoms? (Emerald)
• Oregon Volleyball has a losing record, but, you know, it’s not all bad. (Emerald)
• Ex-Emerald sports honcho Ben Schorzman pops one dessicated hand out of the grave to remind us that Oregon Baseball will be happening again this year and its players are feverishly excited. (Emerald)

Public Affairs:

• Hardhat news: The UO officially broke ground on its newest building, which Richard Lariviere seems to say will singlehandedly advance science decades. (Emerald)
• Shadowy agreements: The Emerald reports that the “matter has been resolved with President Lariviere” over overtime-“gate,” but can’t find specifics. (Emerald)
• Rules: The state has conjured new rules in its public records law that intend to make it harder for the UO to dart its eyes in a furtive attempt at nonchalance while straining desperately to hold closed the doors to the gymnasium where it keeps the corpses. Or something. I’m no lawyer, so I can’t see how this will help. (UO Matters)
• ASUO: Some student government types are scratching their chins in the direction of Richard Lariviere’s restructuring proposal. Meanwhile, the ASUO might stop paying for bottled water.(Emerald)
• Videos: Here is a video about the school’s men’s a cappella choir.
• Podcasts: Hear Emerald types talk briefly about the news.

Opinion

• Letters: In the Guard’s mailbag, a political-sign–maker defends the purchase of political signs because it is good for the political sign industry and a union negotiator comes out of the blue to tell a story.
• Editorials: The Guard tut-tuts about the state’s property tax system before deciding it’s a good thing, and chides the U.S. Supreme Court for banning cameras.
• New Emerald scribbler Bruce Poinsette goes over ways he thinks professors could improve their teaching by listening to students. “Even if I don’t understand the subject but I hear ‘Blah, blah, blah Mad Cow Disease,’ then my ears will perk up,” a source says.
• A Measure 75 supporter defends Measure 75 (Register-Guard).

Scene

• Dr. Dog will be playing in Eugene on Halloween. I say this because not knowing about it, evidently, should make one ashamed. (Voice)

Sports

• Emerald sports-hack Robert Husseman says Oregon Football fans are hungry for revenge and vidication, and a win over the Hated Trojans could give it to them.
• Oregon Golf (W) is doing well-ish, in ninth place, although that puts the team 22 strokes behind the Hated Razorbacks, who have the lead. (Emerald)
• Podcasting: Hear Emerald staffers talk briefly about sports. “How are we doing in the soccer department?”

Public affairs:

• Thrift news: The EMU post office is closing in December because it evidently wasn’t making money, although it will evidently continue paying the EMU to lease its space until April. (Emerald)
• Event administration: Emerald reporter Mat Wolf looks for information about the hired goons detailed with grimacing testily as they drag naughty Autzen Stadium spectators away by the earlobe. He finds a shadowy security contractor that refuses to disclose financial information. “(CMS) is good at being able to work with a lot of the last-minute changes we request,” UO athletics suit Vicki Strand said, conjuring images of Phil Knight demanding ten minutes before kickoff that the guards at his luxury suite at Autzen be traded in for silverback gorillas trained to use Victorian-era flintlock muskets.
• Traffic: Oregon Football is a menace to drivers. (Emerald)
• Cougars: They are in Eugene! (Register-Guard)
• Legal: Bad news for those hankering to have their quests for an education exploited for government subsidies: the state is suing the University of Phoenix, alleging that it lies to investors. (Emerald)
• Exercise: The University wants students fun-running on a day many will undoubtedly be skipping class and sleeping well past 3 p.m. to deal with post-Oregon Football hangovers. (Emerald, Guard)
• Conjugation: Do you think the Guard intend’s on running an article that detail’s it when any Tom, Dick or Harry endorse’s someone who run’s for office?* (Guard)
• Fifth-graders: The Emerald even occasionally scoops the Guard on fluff pieces. (Register-Guard)

Opinion:

• Letters: A UO graduate student tells Emerald readers common perceptions about domestic violence don’t fully grasp its scope. The Guard’s mailbag is again interesting, containing a defense of college students who receive food stamps and a letter-writer calling the paper’s endorsements hypocritical.
• Emerald columnist JoAnna Wendel, taking on satirizing duties for the day, appears to criticize those who would try to inject off-field matters into discussion of FOOTBALL! FOOTBALL! FOOTBALL!
• Ethos blogger Leah Olson paints a chilling picture of a Cambodian killing field. (Ethos)
• Emerald columnist Mark Costigan provides us a retrospective of the Argentine economic crisis of the 1980s.
• Editorials: The Guard praises an Oregonian who won the Nobel Prize for economics. It also praises the economics of the new Pac-12 arrangement.*
• Entertainment: Ethos posts a video of a local band. Full disclosure: I regularly sell one of this band’s members coffee at my dayjob.

Sports:

• Oregon Football 60-13 Hated Bruins. (Emerald, ESPN.com)
• Despite injuries to important players, Oregon Football still beat the Hated Bruins. Remene Alston, Jr., in particular was important. “To see him come in there and play the way he did and rip off a couple runs like that, it was awesome to see,” Oregon Football’s coach said. (Emerald)
• It’s possible that the Hated Bruins’ loss was caused by an inability to keep the ball until they got a touchdown more times than Oregon Football did. “(T)hree points wasn’t going to be the answer tonight,” the Hated Bruins’ coach said after the 60-13 Oregon Football win. (Emerald)
• The Hated Bears, Hated Cardinal, Hated Women of Troy and Hated Bruins are opponents Oregon Volleyball may not beat. “There’s no tricks to doing this,” Oregon Volleyball’s coach says. (Emerald)
• Oregon Soccer sunk by Hated Bruins, draws with Hated Women of Troy. Oregon Soccer players praise performance, despite disappointing results. Hated Women of Troy given two pens as they claw back from early deficit.  “Our record is really a tricky thing because we are so good,” Oregon Soccer defender says. (Emerald)

Public affairs:

• Political money: UO Matters examines who UO employees are backing with their wallets.
• Lung news: An outside organization is throwing $800,000 at stopping UO students from smoking. That’s in the next blog post down from this.
• Rallies: The president visited Oregon to try to massage the electability out of health care–loving silver fox John Kitzhaber. The Emerald reports that cute children were present. The Register-Guard says Kitzhaber was happy about it, and also that Obama said he is both a Ducks fan and a Beavers fan. The Oregonian brings a clearer sense of context, and also talks to someone who works for job-promising center Chris Dudley.
• Product bans: A campus group is trying to stop the UO selling bottled water on campus. (Register-Guard)
• ASUO: Ben Eckstein is trying to get people to vote. (Emerald)
• Luxury berries: Unfortunately for stupid people with lots of money, the acai cherry does not cure cancer. (Emerald)
• Honesty news: The Oregonian rules that Chuck RileyBruce Starr didn’t break the law when he accepted a free trip to Hawai’i from a lobbying group because it wasn’t the law yet.

Opinion:

• Emerald opinion-honcho and now-former Safeway “indentured servant” Tyree Harris vents his spleen on Safeway customers.
• Eugene teacher/parent Jason Aulicino says Oregon does not provide an education beyond grade 5, and seems hell-bent on killing his own essay with numbers.
• Letters: A couple of the usual, and screeds against EWEB and UO faculty in the Guard’s mailbag.
• Editorials: The Guard crows about its support of Measures 66 and 67, pointing to a recent Forbes ranking. The Guard also wonders “What is up with the French?” before concluding, I think, that the problem is that Jean-Jacques Rousseau cannot be reincarnated. The Emerald endorses measures 70–72 and opposes 73 and 74.

Scene:

• Football players going out to eat chicken wings three times a day! TV station employees moonlighting as moviemakers seek “illusion of money.” Students turn Oregon Football success into new shirt, viral video!
• Blue Scholars in Eugene. (Emerald, Oregon Voice)

Sports:

• Emerald sports-hack Robert Husseman wants teams in the Pac-12 to play eleven conference games. I realize, reading how worked up Husseman is over this issue, how snide he gets, that I will never care about football.
• Former Oregon football quarterback Jeremiah Masoli still wants your love. (Portland Tribune)
• Oregon football does not want to lose today. Rather, it wants to win. (Emerald)
• Oregon Football kicker Rob Beard never played soccer, and ends interviews with an ominous “so...” (Emerald)
• Here’s a back-and-forth between Emerald sports-hack-in-chief Lucas Clark and Daily Bruin sports-hack Ryan Eshoff. Warning: there is a pun. (Emerald)
• Alarming medical news: Oregon football player “Marvin (Johnson) will play with both legs hanging by the skin. And he has.” Starting to see what Andy Drukarev was saying about the dangers of college football. (Emerald)
• Darron Thomas is a good player, but then again, Hated Bruins free safety Rahim Moore is also good. (Emerald)
• Mixed metaphors (automotive with gunnery): “But unfortunately for the (Hated) Bruins, the pistol hasn’t exactly been firing on all cylinders.”** (Emerald)
• Oregon Basketball (M) players are not trashing their coach publicly. (Emerald)
• Clark pen-sketches some Oregon Basketball (M) players. (Emerald)

* Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

** Drukarev could be talking about this.

Public affairs:

• Democracy: Emerald reporter Ian Geronimo looks into the soul of the County Commission races on this year’s ballot and finds only pain. (Emerald)
• Unpopular initiatives: The effort to beat the UO’s riverfront development continues with efforts to drag Richard Lariviere before the UO Senate. (Emerald)
• Plants: The Emerald with a feature on an OSU program in Eugene.
• Literature: A novelist and her translator will be on campus Thursday* for a reading. (Ethos Magazine**)
• The obese: The U.S. government is trying to move part of nutrition labels to the front of food packages. (Emerald)
• Honesty news: The Oregonian with what appears to be a slightly harsh ruling of “false” on a Congressional candidate’s claims regarding his rival.

Opinion:

• UO Matters readers get deep on Richard Lariviere’s overtime policy and subsequent scolding. Of all the things in this digest, this one is worth reading.
• The Guard’s Editorial Board says Lariviere’s decision to give overtime to employees on furloughs was stupid but well intentioned.
• UO Matters also has praise for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
• Emerald columnist Matt Tellam goes to meetings for the College Democrat and Republican parties and finds that, surprise surprise, they are boring and devoid of intellectual substance.
• Journalism student Becky Metrick pinch-hits an Emerald column about a girl who’s been through serious shit.
• The Emerald Editorial Board has taken over satirizing duties for the moment, and writes about students’ desire to sleep, frolic, and possibly have sex with one another.
• Editorials: An EWEB employee was sexually assaulted three times by her co-workers, and EWEB allegedly did nothing to stop it, which the Guard’s editors say  is emblematic of a larger problem.
• Letters: The Guard’s mailbag is surprisingly nearly free from suspiciously on-message, pro-candidate missives purportedly written by everyday citizens all by themselves. Instead, it contains attacks on the newspaper’s endorsements and a thank-you note to the police.