President Richard Lariviere

Katie D.

November 30, 2011 - 8:07 PM

If you are part of the University of Oregon community, you have undoubtedly heard about the Oregon Board of Education's decision to fire Richard Lariviere from his position as University President. This has been reported widely around campus, in Oregon, and across the country (including in the New York Times). The firing of our innovative and beloved university leader by an outside board has caused a massive and unprecedented uproar on campus and in our community. Faculty, staff, and students have spent the past week trying to react to the news.

The basic conflict emerged over governance of the University: essentially that the UO receives only 6-7% of its total budget from the state, and yet is under direction and limitation from the state Board. While Lariviere saw the need for aggressive changes to improve faculty salary, staff support, and new efforts to move the university toward excellence in education and research, the Board is focused on the needs of the state as a whole. Not all state institutions can afford faculty and staff raises (even cutting salaries in the form of furlough days for most staff), so the decision was made that all institutions would cut together. Lariviere disagreed, arguing that a flourishing institution must offer competitive salaries in order to attract and retain the best and brightest to the UO. So he gave people raises. And then the Board fired him.

Today there was a University faculty meeting held in Mac Court and open to the entire UO community. The Board chancellor and one Board member were present to answer questions and attempt to "re-open lines of communication" between the Board and the UO. They spoke of broken trust on the part of Lariviere. The faculty and students of the UO spoke of broken trust and alienation from the Board.

President Lariviere attended the meeting only long enough to thank us all for being there. We gave him a two minute standing ovation. When the Chancelor was introduced, only six people in the crowd clapped.

I do not have the full story or context of President Lariviere's firing. I don't agree with all of his innovations, and I believe he has let some policies change under his leadership which will take the UO down a bad path in the future (such as de-funding Sexual Assault Survivor Services and changes to multicultural student services which limit student access to support). However, I believe that Richard Lariviere was extraordinarily qualified to be the University President. The UO is flourishing under his guidance, and he has proven himself to be exceptionally intelligent, open to students, and a morale-boosting presence everywhere on campus.

Whatever the "broken trust" concerns might have been for the Board, I find it extraordinary and horrifying that they would fire the UO president without consulting UO faculty or students, and that they would do so behind closed doors and in the final weeks of the academic term.

I feel quite disillusioned by the events of this week, insofar as trust in visionary leadership and the true consequences of success are sometimes punished, rather than celebrated. I am disappointed in the state of education in Oregon.

However, today I am extraordinarily proud to be a Duck. I am proud of our community and the expression of our collective outrage over the shoddy procedures and questionable motivations behind the firing of Lariviere. But I am happy to be part of the crowd who applauds leadership, and heartened by the commitment to our community shown in the media and in the discourse around governance and university identity.

It all comes down to, in the end, who we are as an educational community. I am proud to be a Duck and proud to be a member of our University. I hope this remains the case in the months ahead, and that new efforts to build strong local leadership may be fostered in the wake of this disempowering move by statewide power.