For the dedicated follower of controversy, this (PDF link) is required reading. Ladies and gentlemen, the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity’s Five-Year Diversity Plan: it’s what we’re all going to be screaming at each other about next year.

(By the way, I would like to take this opportunity to declare a pre-emptive moratorium on “five-year plan” jokes. Seriously, couldn’t they have picked a different number?)

Released without fanfare (and, coincidentally enough, one day before the final University Senate meeting of the year) to an uncritical write-up from the ODE, the brouhaha surrounding this document has been steadily building over the last couple of weeks as more people have actually gotten a chance to read it. (Including, as detailed here, some who were rather upset to learn that they had supposedly been involved in writing it.) Put simply, it is an audacious institutional power grab on the part of the OIED – as the plan currently reads, they would have a say in the funding of new academic positions, hiring decisions, tenure review, salary levels, and virtually every significant operational aspect of every University department. The standard by which all departments will be judged is the nebulously-defined one of “cultural competency”, and you won’t need three guesses to figure out which branch of the University administration will be in charge of deciding who is “culturally competent” and who is not.

This is, as they say, developing – and it’s likely to get interesting before too long. First salvo: the MCC is apparently holding a demonstration in the EMU amphitheater at 2 PM today in support of the plan. Hold on to your hats, folks.

Absurdly short notice, but it might be worth pointing out that there’ll be a panel on campus press censorship this evening, organized by the Bias Response Team. If you haven’t seen the expressions that cross Tyler’s face as people explain to him that the OC should be run out of Eugene on a rail, you’re missing out; and we sincerely hope that this will be the last chance you get this year.

6:30 PM, 111 Lillis.

So, farewell then, Gregory J. Vincent. After eighteen months of coordinating the more-chaotic-than-usual diversity effort on campus, our Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity will become Vice Provost for Inclusion and Cross-Cultural Effectiveness at the University of Texas.

He will be remembered as a law professor who encouraged student officials such as Dan Kieffer to break the law if they feel like it, as one of the administrators whose bad advice led Toby Hill-Meyer into this year’s quixotic battle against the press, and as a diversity maven who responded to the safety concerns of minority students who didn’t toe the party line with, at best, silence. We wish him all the best for the future.

When will Onterrio Smith learn: Airport security will always find your stash of plastic cocks and freeze-dried urine. Always, my friend.

So, I submit this to the ODE yesterday. They printed it without hacking it to pieces, but left out one key passage.

Per the grossly overquoted Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”

That gave context to the whole submission. Thanks, ODE. Thanks a lot.
But thanks for running it 24 hours after I wrote in. That was a classy move.

“Heyyyy! This is Mr. T talkin’! That’s capital T that rhymes with me! I wanna tell you about somethin’ that happened to us in Seattle! You know, sometimes we get so wrapped up in how a problem bothers us, we don’t see what the problem really is! You know, my little friend Kim found that out the hard way when we tangle with this mean dude who was messing with people minds [sic] and stealin’ they thoughts [sic]! Which is why we call this case the Mystery of the Miiiiind Thieves!”

Truly words to live by.

[via agony booth]

Bask in the crapulence that is the Huffington Post. Then read Nikki Finkes semi-insane rant about just how crapulent it is.

As reported in the Emerald today, our friends at the MCC, whose views on legality and fairness have been extensively recorded, have created a petition in support of restoring $94,600 of lost stipends. Mike Sherminator Sherman has cleverly named this second option Option Two. The money would come from overrealized funds.

[Kit] Myers said group members are “really hoping” for the second option because pay cuts disproportionately affect low-income students and students of color. He said group leaders’ pay is small, but it allows some students to participate who might otherwise have to work elsewhere.

Blah blah blah race blah blah blah poverty blah blah. Clearly, there are problems with the new stipend model, with some groups like KWVA and the MCC receiving all their stipends and other groups like APS being cut drastically and for no apparent reason. Most of the ethnic student unions had one or two of their three stipended positions cut, which is disproportionate only because there are so many groups.

Here’s my solution: If you are a low-income student (full disclosure, I am a low income student), which is not synonymous with student of color, you should probably seek gainful employment outside of the ASUO. If you want a leadership position, then suck it up. Leadership opportunities and resume fodder should be their own rewards. And seriously, can anybody live off $125 a month? Is that anything but beer money? Maybe thats why these students are so damn poor.

Read Ian Spencers take on the new stipend model and its flaws in the last issue for the real scoopThe Senate will convene tonight to vote on Option Two.

I know I’ve been going on about foreign affairs a bit lately, but these elections only happen once every four or five years.

Anyway: I am going to be keeping an eye out for the prose stylings of this Richard Gott fellow from now on.

Blair has followed in [Neville Chamberlain’s] footsteps, and is destined for the same place in history’s hall of infamy. Like Chamberlain, he is an arrogant and God-fuelled appeaser, the unseemly ally of an unbridled country that presents a global threat similar to Germany in the 1930s.

Your eyes do not deceive you: he really did just go there!

The most popular slogan at the moment is “Blair must go”. This simple message echoes across the political spectrum from the Conservative party to Respect, and even into the ranks of Labour itself. It clearly has majority support in the country. Blair is a war criminal who should be locked up behind bars without a vote, not standing for election.

Mmmm. Sweet, delicious tears. Do not be misled by reports of Labour’s “sharply reduced” majority: compared to any British parliament with the exception of the last two, a majority in the sixties is thoroughly convincing.

Gabe Bradley ripped off my editorial!

Oh, I almost forgot. Looks like Blair’s back. Not sure if I voted for him or not, but I think this probably the least bad outcome.

UPDATE: This post contains the text of a letter to Blair from Iraqi President Talibani. On the other hand, this Reason piece is somewhat optimistic about the Lib Dems, for whom I think I may actually have cast my ballot.

DOUBLE UPDATE: Impossible to say for sure, but I am told I voted for the local Lib Dem candidate. I would have liked to cast a farewell vote for Blair (call it a “reverse protest vote”) but where I come from Labo(u)r is pretty much dead in the water.

I’m a little confused about something. Here is an unsurprisingly laudatory Reason article on Janice Brown, the DC Circuit nominee who is liable to be filibustered unless Senate Republicans exercise the “nuclear option”. (There’s a decent joke about a “Frist strike policy” to be made there, but unfortunately Bill beat me to it.)

What’s disconcerting here, though, is not that Reason is writing pieces that endear me to a libertarian judge, but that when I go looking for the bad news on Brown, I can’t find it. This is representative of the form, and although it is a non-insane, soberly written, substantive piece intended to be critical of Brown, I don’t come away from it thinking any less of her. (You mean she has “[c]alled for the Supreme Court to return to its pre-1937 pattern of sweeping away many federal and state economic regulations by imposing severe limits on Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce…”? Say it ain’t so!) The leftish side of the commentariat seems convinced that Brown is the worst thing since unsliced bread, but I’m not sure why. I know she opposes affirmative action, but that by itself hardly seems to merit her being made the poster child for Evil Bush Judges. Am I missing something here, or what?

(We discussed this before a bit, here. Janice Brown, Terri Schiavo, and me using labored metaphors relating to the slicedness of bread: truly, there is no new thing under the sun.)

Sign outside the EMU today: “COME FIND OUT WHY EGGS & DAIRY AREN’T FEMINIST FOOD”.

Check out the new post-election issue. It’s chock full of goodness. Read Olly Ruff’s memorial of Andrea Dworkin, or Ian Spencer’s piece on the new stipend model. Hell, you can even read my rambling, far-too long piece on the ASUO.

Enjoy.

According to the Emerald, Bruce Miller, 62, is dead.

This is very sad news. Unlike Hatoon, Miller was an actual presence, a person with whom you could interact. He may have been annoying from time to time, but deep down, I think he was a genuinely caring man. Perhaps he cared too much. Its hard to understand how a 60-year-old man could be so consumed by the inner workings of student government.

But whether he was handing you copies of his latest hand-written diatribe against Dan Williams or telling Ben Strawns mother that her son was incompetent, he made an impact. Hell surely be missed for that.

For us at the Commentator, a little piece of our history died with Bruce. In a way we were intrinsically intertwined. I remember that the last time I saw Bruce he was carrying two things: a photocopy of one of our editorials and a copy of Petes feature biography about him.

Like I said, I find this sad