UO E-clips, Jan. 10

Bridging the language gap (Oregon Daily Emerald): As a University freshman last year, Zane Hager needed one more class to round out his course load. "I was looking for something to pad out my schedule, something exotic," he said. Hager found himself learning Arabic through the Self-Study language program, a tutoring program the University's Yamada Language Center administers for students interested in studying languages not typically offered at the University. "(YLC) is the service, technology and teaching resources for all languages taught at the U of O," explained Director Jeff Magoto.

Frohnmayer expresses concern about passage of new resource fee structure (Daily Emerald): University President Dave Frohnmayer at Wednesday's University Senate meeting lamented the passage of the Oregon University System's new resource fee structure, reiterating his concern the "sticker shock" could drive students away. "I have expressed vocal concerns about what this will do to the overall tuition of this university," Frohnmayer said during his State of the University address. "This is an issue that does implicate the University in a very broad way." Associate professor John Chalmers, chairman of the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Arena Financing, presented the committee's lengthy report. Although it took three times the allotted time, the report generated little discussion among senators. Senate Vice President Paul van Donkelaar updated the Senate on his committee's work with on-line course evaluations. Last term's pilot program had a "very good response rate," and the committee plans to have new evaluation questions, policy and legislation in place by fall term.

Arena wouldn't use academic funds, UO says (Oregonian): One day after a faculty committee report criticized revenue projections for the University of Oregon's proposed basketball arena, Oregon president Dave Frohnmayer promised that no academic funds would be used on the project. Frohnmayer and athletic director Pat Kilkenny appeared at a regular meeting of the university senate Wednesday to deliver annual reports and to hear members of a university senate budget subcommittee present their report on arena financing. The subcommittee's goal was not to decide whether the $200 million arena project was viable as planned but to assess its financial risk to the university as a whole. It concluded the risk would be low if the conservative end of revenue projections by consulting firm Conventions, Sports and Leisure International, materialized.

When it comes to food, 'local' and organic' aren't separate trends (Register-Guard guest viewpoint by Natalie Reitman-White, manager of the UO's Food Trade Sustainability Leadership program: The subtitle on a Jan. 2 article in The Register-Guard’s Entree section repeated a popular new mantra: “local is the new organic.” While I am a huge supporter of the local food movement and volunteer to support many efforts to maintain the viability of regional farms and food processors, I feel pangs of disappointment and dismay whenever I hear this phrase so casually used. What concerns me is not the issues, but the framing. The very statement presents a false dichotomy: When it comes to our food, we must choose between competing attributes -- we can have “either-or,” but we cannot consider “and.” Yet organic food and locally produced food are actually complementary concepts.