UO E-clips, Nov. 17-19

Are museums academic units? (Inside Higher Ed): You’d never see an English department chair reporting to the vice president for advancement instead of to deans and provosts. University of Oregon professors want to know why that principle doesn’t apply to the art museum. This summer, Oregon’s president took the uncommon if not unheard-of step of deciding that the director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, who has historically reported to the provost, would report to the advancement office instead -- prompting faculty opposition that took the form of a University Senate resolution Wednesday.

Heyer sentenced to 19 months in prison (Daily Emerald): Nearly 50 people came to watch the sentencing of 22-year-old Aaron Vernon Heyer. Many couldn't hold back their tears when the mother of the man Heyer killed last spring said she couldn't believe she will never see her son, Brian Reams, again. "I feel worse for the boys and the young people that Brian knew because they have to change their whole lives," Debra Reams said. "They made plans with him and now they have to change that." Heyer was sentenced to 19 months in prison on Friday for failing to stop his car after he hit and killed University student Brian Reams, 22, in the early morning hours of March 4. Reams was crossing Hilyard Street at 15th Avenue when Heyer, who was driving a dark green Cadillac Seville, crashed into him.)

Evidence ties Blue Mountains to other ranges (Associated Press, appearing in The Seattle Times): New geological evidence ties the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon with the Klamath and Sierra Nevada ranges hundreds of miles to the south. In a study funded by the National Science Foundation, researchers at the University of Oregon and Washington State University dated zircon grains from Triassic- and Jurassic-aged sedimentary rocks in the Blues. The grains match the ages of rocks found in the Klamath Mountains, a heavily timbered, rugged range in southwestern Oregon and northern California. So we think at this point that we may have the most definitive evidence to date that during (the) Jurassic time there was a connection between the rocks of the Blue Mountains and eastern Klamath ranges, Todd LaMaskin, a UO graduate student, said in a press release.

Art professor sues over detention while photographing power lines (Associated Press, appearing in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer): A veteran University of Washington professor knew Snohomish would be a good place to shoot photographs of power lines against an unobstructed sky to use in her art work. What Shirley E. Scheier, 54, didn't know was that she would be detained by police for 44 minutes in which she was frisked, patted down, handcuffed and held in the back of a police car. … Police detention of photographers has increased nationwide since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, said Kyu Ho Youm, a First Amendment professor at the University of Oregon.