Cougster

Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of medical and scientific literature, lost it bid to keep its contract with WSU secret.

From the Association of Research Libraries:

Whitman County Superior Court, State of Washington, ruled Friday, June 19, 2009, in favor of full disclosure for a public-records request submitted to Washington State University by Ted Bergstrom, Paul Courant, and Preston McAfee for license information regarding the WSU-Elsevier contract. On June 9, Elsevier had filed a Motion for Injunction against release of the data. According to court papers, the plaintiff argued that disclosure of the Elsevier-WSU contracts would “disclose aspects of Elsevier’s pricing methods and formula so as to produce private gain and public loss. Such disclosure would violate Elsevier’s rights under Washington statutes…to preserve the confidentiality of its proprietary pricing methods and formulae.”
“We could see no reason why the open-records request should not be fulfilled in this case,” said Jay Starratt, Dean of Libraries, Washington State University. “As a member of ARL’s Scholarly Communication Committee, I am interested in the results of the data analysis being conducted by the researchers.”
Researchers Ted Bergstrom, Professor of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Paul Courant, University Librarian, Dean of Libraries, and Professor of Public Policy, Economics, and Information, University of Michigan, said, “We believe that state open-access laws serve the public interest by requiring full transparency of contracts that involve millions of taxpayer dollars. We will continue to collect and analyze the terms of ‘Big Deal’ contracts signed by a large number of universities and to share this information with the library community

We are glad to see that Elsevier’s injunction was rejected. Government contracts, statistics, or almost any info should be made available to anyone free of charge. That is half the reason Cougster exists, to provide more transparency in WSU related matters. Thanks to DigitalKoans where we first found out about this story.

Two WSU football players, Tyree Toomer and LeAndre Daniels, were arrested yesterday for allegedly stealing bikes.

From Cougfan:

…were arrested on theft and burglary charges and were immediately suspended. “Paul Wulff and the coaching staff are aware of the situation. The student-athletes have been suspended from team activities while more information is gathered, and appropriate action will be taken,” said WSU Sports Information Director Bill Stevens.

The pair were arrested on Tuesday according to police documents, and both were still in custody as of 11 a.m. on Wednesday.

Toomer and Daniels are accused of second degree burglary, residential burglary and theft in the second and third degrees.

Campus police said the two had been seen taking bicycles and upon further investigation, they apprehended Daniels and Toomer and located the bicycles at their shared residence.

A hacksaw, reported stolen from a nearby home construction site, also was located at their residence, according to the report in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Formal charges from the Whitman County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office are pending.

Now when it is partying and MIP stuff we usually don’t care but stealing bikes, god we hate people who do stuff like that. We hope they are given a 3 games suspension at least.

A WSU student had swine flu. The key word is HAD, the 19 year-old student has fully recovered after contracting it in mid May. We are glad this Coug got better fast. The Olympian has more on this story.

Next year’s common reading book Omnivore’s Dilemma will not be read by all WSU students.

On the Common Reading webpage Susan Poch, Associate Vice President, Educational Development, Student Affairs, Equity and Diversity says:

This year, given the circumstances currently facing our institution, changes must be made to the program. Instead of distributing the current selection, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, at the Alive! summer orientation sessions as was previously done, program staff will contact faculty to ascertain whether they wish to use the book in their classes, and then will arrange for distribution.

During the academic year, the Common Reading Program will be re-evaluated to ensure adequate funding and continued excellence in program development.

Thank you for your consideration.

A translation of this BS memo is we are afraid to piss off agribusiness people. They have already purchased 4,000 books clearly the only reason they are not having the common reading is the wrath of some donors not some concern about academic quality of the program.

Different websites have picked up on this development.
Huffington Post
Treehugger
Themoderatevoice

Don’t cross sociology faculty or they will come after you, well at least do some blogging. Shamus Rahman Khan an assistant professor Department of Sociology Columbia University sticks up for the Department of Community and Rural Sociology (CRS) at WSU. With the budget cuts there are a lot of positions getting cut at WSU, the whole CRS department is getting the ax along with 8 faculty members.

From the blog scatterplot:

Some of you have probably heard the news … In the face of a 10.5% budget cut, Washington State University announced on May 1 that it will eliminate the Department of Community and Rural Sociology (CRS) and terminate the employment of eight faculty members, including Don Dillman (Regents Professor), Emmett Fiske (Professor), Annabel Kirschner (Professor), Ray Jussaume (Professor and Chair), Jose Garcia-Pabon (Assistant Professor), William Gray (Professor), and myself (Assistant Professor). For most of us, employment will end in 12 months. Because Jose has been at the university for less than two years, his employment will end in 6 months. More information about our department can be found here.

In the words of my, Annabel Kirschner: “Our unit has 3 problems: extension support, size, and inaccurate information. President Floyd has decided to do vertical cuts to cope with the budget reduction to ‘preserve the quality of the university.’ Thus sciences and vet med are being cut by around 4-5%, and extension is being cut by 20% (much better than the 75% cut that was floated by the provost at one time). Many of us have extension appointments, and we are relatively small, so they’re hoping they can cut the department without too much of a problem.

The information that filtered up to the top was also inaccurate. It stated that our faculty brought in only $23,000 in grant money last year. Actually department faculty have averaged over $600,000 for the last 3 years but some of this gets credited to other units because of split appointments and other factors. Our teaching program was not recognized either. While we don’t have a major, we teach about 400 student credit hours per year in 4-6 different courses on a .8 teaching FTE. We also serve on numerous MA and PhD committees for students from different departments.”