UO E-clips, Dec. 25-29

The use and abuse of paper towels (New York Times): Paper towels billowing out of bathroom dispensers is, for some environmentalists, a painful symbol of waste. Rob Gogan, the recycling and waste manager at Harvard University, estimated that paper towels often account for 20 to 40 percent of waste (by volume) from an office building or a dorm. The university is trying to cut down their use. In some buildings, Harvard urges students to use fewer, with a sticker saying “use wisely, paper equals trees”. The slogan is borrowed from the University of Oregon, Mr. Gogan said.

The Trials and tribulations (Register-Guard): Call it the Roar of 2008. On a magical summer evening, more than 20,000 spectators crammed into the University of Oregon’s legendary Hayward Field and awaited the next event in the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials: the men’s 800-meter finals. The starting gun sounded, and the crowd murmured as runners vied for position in the two-lap race. On the last turn, Oregon Track Club Elite star Nick Symmonds charged past on the outside, bringing the crowd to its feet with a monstrous kick to win his ticket to the Beijing Olympics. The roar of approval was immense … In the view of 334 Register-Guard readers who participated in this year’s online poll, the Olympic Trials was unequivocably the biggest local story of 2008. The voting wasn’t even close, with virtually every respondent placing the Trials on their top 10 list, and nearly one in three pegging the 10-day extravaganza as the year’s No. 1 story.

Oregon's economy endures a bear of a year (The Oregonian): Established Oregon economists scoffed a year ago when a younger colleague with a relatively new crystal ball declared: "A recession is likely imminent." Come on, they said, the nation's economy was growing at 4.9 percent. Housing sales were declining nationally, but most mortgages were still being paid on time. Oregon enjoyed a 5.5 percent unemployment rate and kept adding jobs. As it turns out, University of Oregon economist Tim Duy, and his index of economic indicators, was closer to the target than even he imagined. The state's 2008 economy quickly became a set of falling dominoes.

UO study shows Rogue warming (Register-Guard): The Rogue Valley, just a geographic hop and skip from Eugene, could end up looking more like central California than Southwest Oregon after only a few more decades of climate change, says a new study by University of Oregon researchers and others. In one of the first studies ever to project the effects of a warming world down to a specific geographic region, scientists with the UO’s Climate Leadership Initiative and the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy say the Rogue Valley will see hotter, drier summers and rainier, stormier winters in the not-so-distant future.

UO backs off on conflict of interest (Eugene Weekly): After backlash from faculty members about the new Conflict of Interest-Conflict of Commitment (COI-C) policy hastily implemented by the UO, the school has now decided to suspend the planned January 2009 implementation of the plan. Faculty members objected not only to portions of the policy itself but to the way it was developed, without the faculty input required by state law. The proposed COI-C policy applied to faculty, graduate students, researchers and other non-classified staff employees of the UO and demanded they report their possible conflicts of interest or commitment annually. These conflicts included anything from holding elected office to owning a business.

Frohnmayer has tight grip on new pay check (Eugene Weekly); As the recession deepens, corporate executives and university presidents across the nation have volunteered deep pay cuts, but not UO President Dave Frohnmayer. UO economics professor Bill Harbaugh wrote in an Oregonian op-ed this month that Frohnmayer’s pay package has increased 387 percent since 2000 to more than $700,000 a year. Harbaugh points to salary surveys showing that at comparable universities, many much larger than the UO, presidents earn about a third less. Meanwhile, at the UO, average professor salaries are only 83 percent of peers.