UO E-clips, May 22

No vacancies at UO dorms (Associated Press, appearing in the Oregonian): A large class of incoming freshmen has the University of Oregon scrambling to find student housing. The 20,000-student university expects 3,800 freshmen next fall -- 400 more than the year before. The university has dorm rooms for about 3,600 students, and some of those beds go to upperclassmen. All incoming freshmen who applied for on-campus housing before the March 31 deadline will get a dorm room. But 800 students who applied for housing after the deadline have been put on a waiting list.

Record enrollment strains university housing (KVAL.com): The start of fall term is still four months away, but the University of Oregon is getting ready for a full house. Projected record enrollment is going to pack campus housing. "A housing crunch is a reality," says Robin Holmes, vice president of student affairs. By the numbers, nearly 21,000 students are expected on the Eugene campus. Officials said a record-size 3,800 student freshman class is the big reason, an increase of 400 kids.

University faculty salaries lagging behind (Oregon Daily Emerald): While pay raises for college administrators across the nation beat inflation for the 11th year in a row, faculty salaries lagged behind, according to reports by two national collegiate associations. While the two studies, one from the American Association of University Professors and the other from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, highlight national trends, the disparity is also evident at the University of Oregon. Salaries for full professors are only about 80 percent of those at comparable institutions, and they have grown marginally since 1999.

Scientists dig in at Gateway grave (Register-Guard): Sifting shovelful after shovelful of dirt through a one-eighth-inch screen, Chris Ruiz is digging deep into a mystery: Whose bones are in this grave? Ruiz will spend the next few months with a team of anthropologists from the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History, piecing together clues from the grave site, land ownership and other historical records to answer the question raised last week when a backhoe operator turned up an unmarked grave on the construction site of Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend.

Awards recognize journalists who did the right thing -- a Register-Guard guest viewpoint by Tim Gleason (These are challenging times for the news organizations that have defined journalism in the United States for more than a century and for the journalists who work in what we now call the “mainstream media.” Since the rise of the commercial press in the late 1800s, an advertising-based revenue model has supported journalism -- from the great to the mediocre -- and the development of the ethical standards that inform and guide working journalists. Today these ethical standards are threatened, as news organizations cast about for a new business model to sustain high-quality journalism.