UO President Dave Frohnmayer has been backdating Affirmative Action plans, to make it look as if UO has been complying with federal regulations. This PR request asks for information on this within 5 days.:
Dear President Frohnmayer and Mr. Park:
This is a public records request for any one document showing when UO's 2008 Affirmative Action Plan was transmitted to, or signed by, UO President Frohnmayer.
In his inauguration speech on Tuesday, President Obama called for "government to do its business in the light of day." His first official act was to sign an executive order making easier for people to obtain information from the federal government via FOIA requests. While Oregon law does not specify how long state agencies have to comply with a public records request, most other states do, and the median allowable response time is 5 working days. Given this, I ask that President Frohnmayer respect the spirit of President Obama's first official act and direct Mr. Park, UO's public records officer, to produce this document within 5 working days.
Federal regulations require that UO update its AA plan every 12 months. UO's compliance with this rule has been very poor. In fact I can only find one case in the past 7 years when UO has done this successfully, and in many cases UO has gone 2 years, or even longer, between updates.
President Frohnmayer has repeatedly backdated the plans so as to make it appear that UO has been in compliance, when in fact it has not.
For example, the 2007 AA plan, which was dated "effective Jan 1 2007" was not actually transmitted to and signed by President Frohnmayer until August 2007. Similarly, the most recent plan, online at http://aaeo.uoregon.edu/plan.html is dated "effective Jan 1 2008" but was not prepared or signed until, I believe, October of 2008.
Given the demonstrated importance of the actual date on which this AA plan was signed, and the general public interest in the question of UO's compliance with AA rules, as demonstrated by recent stories in the Daily Emerald and Oregonian, (attached) and by several recent lawsuits against UO dealing with affirmative action issues, I ask for a fee waiver for this request.
I also note that more than 12 months have now passed since the "effective Jan 1 2008" date on UO's most recent AA plan. I suggest that President Frohnmayer append a clarifying note to the page on which he has signed this plan as "effective Jan 1 2008", noting the date on which he actually signed the plan, and that he and AAEO Director Penny Daugherty agree that in the future UO will follow federal rules and prepare a new plan by the anniversary of the date on which this 2008 plan was actually completed.
Sincerely,
Bill Harbaugh
Economics, University of Oregon
http://harbaugh.uoregon.edu
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