• October 29, 2018
Dear University of Oregon community,
Saturday’s horrific massacre of 11 innocent men and women in Pittsburgh, as they worshipped together, no doubt shocks each and every one of us. It should. The 11 souls whose lives were extinguished were targeted solely because of the god they worship. These killings follow on the heels of the murders of two African American shoppers at a grocery store in Kentucky last Wednesday and the attempted delivery of pipe bombs to a number of people who were selected apparently because of their political beliefs.
• Dear members of the University of Oregon community,
The University of Oregon is proud to be a welcoming and inclusive campus that supports the rights of every member of our community, including people of all genders and gender identities.
• March 5, 2019 President Michael H. Schill delivered the following remarks at the UO Board of Trustees full board meeting in Eugene: Good morning. Yesterday Jamie gave us a sobering review of the university’s budget situation. While it presents challenges for all of us, it is something that we will manage our way through without harming all of the progress we have achieved over the past four years. That to me is very important.
• In October 2014, before my arrival on the UO campus, the university announced what was then an audacious goal of raising $2 billion to strengthen this institution in ways never before considered. It has been an honor to work alongside so many of you toward this unprecedented goal. Thanks to the incredible generosity of our alumni and friends, we have reached $1.87 billion and will, at some point over the next year, cross that $2 billion threshold. It has been a massive undertaking that has transformed this campus in amazing ways and created new opportunities for Oregonians. I am deeply grateful to the more than 95,000 donors who have contributed to the campaign.
• Dear University of Oregon community members:
It is incredibly exciting to see the University of Oregon campus return to life at the beginning of the academic year. The crisp fall air, the flaming hues of changing leaves, and hustle-bustle associated with move-in, the first day of classes, convocation, meeting new people, and rekindling friendships gives me a renewed sense of energy, hope, and enthusiasm. I cannot wait to see what each of you—students and members of the faculty and staff—accomplishes and achieves in the coming year.
• As we close out the 2017-18 academic year, I offer my warm congratulations to all of our graduates. I also want to thank everyone—faculty, advisors, graduate instructors and researchers, and staff—who helped our graduates reach the finish line. Together, we accomplished quite a bit this year. We took big leaps forward in advancing our academic enterprise: we broke ground on the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact and hired a permanent executive director to lead this extraordinary effort to further the mission of science in the service of society; we invested in promising new academic programs—from data science and science media to embedding education researchers in high schools—and we continued to hire and invest in world-class scholars in fields such as obesity prevention, Black studies, anthropology, and volcanology to name a few.
• Ensuring the University of Oregon has an inclusive and welcoming campus for students, staff, faculty, and the community is a top institutional priority. We must continuously look for ways to strengthen and enhance efforts to address and reduce incidents of discrimination and harassment. To further these efforts, the UO is consolidating its Title IX and Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity offices under a newly formed Office of Civil Rights Compliance
• Late last night, the university sent out a campus safety advisory about two serious crimes involving UO students that happened recently in neighborhoods near campus within the Eugene Police Department’s (EPD) jurisdiction. We sent this information to campus as soon as we were able to confirm these incidents with EPD. These assaults follow a series of armed robberies and other crimes in recent weeks near campus that have shaken our collective sense of safety and security. They are of serious concern to us, as we know they are to our students, their families, faculty, staff, and neighbors.
• n the last week, a rash of five armed robberies near the university has disrupted our collective sense of safety. One of my primary concerns at all times is the safety and security of our students, faculty and staff, and the proximity of these crimes to campus is distressing to us all. I have asked Police Chief Matt Carmichael to do everything within University of Oregon Police Department’s power to both help solve the crimes and increase efforts to protect members of the UO community from these types of incidents.
