Thanks for the shout out Jack. Chancellor Pernsteiner has gone bat sh*t crazy. No one can figure out how he convinced Matt Donegan and the rest of the board to go along with his scheme.

But as a UO student once said, "Was it over when the German's bombed Pearl Harbor? No! This is over when *we* say it's over." The road trip to Portland for Monday's OUS Board meeting will go down in history.

It'll be interesting to see what the specific excuse was. I'd love to see a clean sweep of the OUS board and chancellor but Lariviere needed to be fired and should have been fired ages ago. And OUMatters, if you're still wondering why, look at your blog for the past two and a half years. Lariviere has been in charge of all those problems you highlight.

That should be UOMatters, of course.

Hi Andrew - I started UO Matters in April of 2009. President Frohnmayer had just accepted a big raise and a golden parachute contract from Pernsteiner - there's a reason he's #4 on the PERS list. Then he tried to get the faculty and staff to take a 5% pay cut. Lariviere is a long way from perfect, but he had 15 years of bad decisions and bad hires to wade through.

This will not end well for Ricky Lariv.

Replace the whole Board and the fact remains: he is still a prickly prima dona who is a lone wolf and does not play well with others.

And the whole open mtg laws and Exec Session stuff is just so much noise. Board members all knew if they would vote to extend or not, without any mtgs. So the President told Ricky "You don't have the votes, so go quietly, please.". He chose not to go quietly, but to fight. Does this end well if the board caves and does not vote to fire?

This will not end well for Ricky Lariv, whatever happens.

The fervor in Eugene just shows what the primary issue was: Richard thought he only had to care about the greater Eugene area. Did all kinds of things that were problematic for the rest of the state.. ridiculous raises, his stupid partnership proposal that would basically allow him (a guy who has live in Oregon less than 3 years to completely change the mission and privatize a university Oregonians have been investing in for over 100 years)...

His politically tone deaf approach to every decision has cost UO greatly. And in his time when he could care about how the campus heals and moves on-- he chooses again to make this about HIM. He is selfish, un-statesman like, and a narcissist.

Bill Harbaugh and his wife got a giant raise from him recently- no wonder UO matters continues to harp on the world in Lariviere's defense.

Regarding the comment that UO is "a university Oregonians have been investing in for over 100 years" : It's worth keeping in mind that the UO gets just 8% of its funds from the state! The rest comes from donors, research funding, and tuition. I could accept the state board's absurd dismissal of Lariviere if the state at least paid the bills, but it doesn't. The hypocrisy of this decission (the UO must fund itself, but can't run itself) is amazing.

That's actually a lie that people swallowed coming out of the New partnership bs. Count the PERS and PEBB obligation of the state for UO + count the cost of all those buildings built and maintained by the state +count the land cost+ the state appropriation annually.
Now subtract the foundation coffers, subtract the athletics budget, subtract the things that UO has CHOSEN to expand its budget to include that are NOT something the state has any need or obligation to pay for.
It isn't 8 %. Nor 7%. Nor any number the UO marketing machine has fed you.

And more importantly - the vast majority of support funds for UO are coming from STUDENTS- who have openly and repeatedly voiced that they do NOT want the institution going private and they feel the status quo is the best system for them.

Stop drinking the koolaid.
This decision took courage and is the right one. If it was just a personal vendetta--- do you think they would endure this level of public hatred for personal satisfaction?

They didn't need to fire him because they were mad about his legislative agenda- that agenda FAILED in the legislature, and would fail again because it was a BAD policy.

Maybe Lariviere is a terrible UO President, and Donegan, Pernsteiner, and Kitzhaber can find a better one, or at least one more to their liking. But they shouldn't make that decision behind closed doors, with no public notice or discussion. This is not about Lariviere - it's about public participation in our government.

No, this is not about public comment.
This is about a personnel matter.
It isn't a popularity contest.
Those who are most loud about this are people who don't supervise or lead a bunch of employees.

If it's just a popularity contest to keep the UO presidency- we are all screwed. UO has football Saturday and thousands of alums that don't know enough about what ACTUALLY is going on, and are merely marketed to by the UO marketing department... In what world would we ever get the right decisions for OREGONIANS if we allowed personnel matters to be decided based on public input. Sheesh.

Lariviere was on the right track, although perhaps "going it alone" wasn't the way to get where he wanted to go.

Face it, Oregon's university system, and its "flagship" campus in Eugene are mediocrities in the public education world, particularly in comparison to the academic reputations of our neighbors to the south and the north. Yes, I know the University of California is currently running on fumes, but they've got a lot of fumes left before they crash completely. And U Dub runs rings around the U. of O.

Lariviere is trying to change that.

You know, there's so much dumb stuff going on that it's hard to keep the LAST dumb stuff in mind, but I'd like to go back to the State's very own Masters of the Universe, who have somehow convinced everyone that we need them.

Turns out, they are just as useless as I've been saying all along:

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-fallacy/

With the publication of this work, isn't it malfeasance for the state to insist on using investment advisors (and paying them lavishly) instead of simply investing in broad market indices?