The OU Office for Student Affairs hosted a memorial ceremony and planted a tree on the south side of the Bizzell Memorial Library in support of OU President Joseph Harroz and the Harroz family.
Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Associate Dean of Students Kristen Partridge said the ceremony and tree dedication were a way to honor President Harroz and his family after his father, an OU graduate, died of COVID-19 on Sept. 24, 2020.
During the ceremony, Partridge said the tradition of planting trees on OUâs campus has survived since OUâs first president, David Ross Boyd, arrived in Norman with a nursery of tree saplings. The tree that previously stood in the area was removed in January 2020 after it was infected with a fungus.
After the Oklahoma State Department of Health stopped reporting daily COVID-19 numbers, local leaders are making efforts to restore more regular data sharing amid looming mask mandate end dates and rising cases elsewhere.Â
Norman Mayor Breea Clark was alerted to the change during a regular Emergency Management meeting and first voiced her concerns publicly in a Facebook post.
âHow can Governor Kevin Stitt stand by and permit life-saving data to be withheld during a pandemic? Where is the transparency? We can t hide or deny our way out of this pandemic,â Clark wrote in the post. âWithout this data, we have no idea if, when, or where outbreaks are happening in our community, and we just finally got down to manageable numbers that would allow us to reinstate effective contact tracing! This dangerous lack of information communicates to people that there s nothing to see here, and that things are back to normal. They are not.â
OU has reached an agreement with Provident Oklahoma Education Resources, Inc. to transfer ownership of the Cross Village complex to the university, clearing the way for OU freshmen to live in the complex and accelerating replacement of the towers.
According to a Wednesday email from OU President Joseph Harroz, Cross will be considered a university on-campus living property starting in fall 2021, and all outstanding litigation between the university and Provident Oklahoma, the owner of Cross Village and a non-profit subsidiary of Provident Resources that financed Crossâs development, has been resolved.Â
âNow, with Cross Village available for freshmen this fall, we can start the demolition process of Adams Tower this summer,â Harroz wrote in the email. â(The purchase allows OU) to accelerate the replacement of Adams Tower by four years.â
A system that has long been used in several universities across the country to evaluate teachersâ in-class performance has also continually caused doubts about its effectiveness and parity among OU faculty members.
OU professors and instructors said the class evaluation system employed at OU and other institutions can result in significant biases, and the numerical system used is not effective in telling them how to improve their teaching skills. Some professors have implemented their solutions, while another group at OU is preparing for larger institutional change.
Michael Givel, a political science professor and president of OU s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said he believes the current evaluation system is âmore of a customer surveyâ than an effective professional development tool.Â
Norman activists began a #PoliceFreeFutures month social media campaign for April, encouraging participants to create 30 different visions for community safety without police.
The Norman Collective for Racial Justice â who is leading this event â is calling artists, creators, activists and revolutionary thinkers to take over their platform and share ideas on how to keep the community safe without police.Â
âSome people have the misconception that police and public safety are synonyms, and so the idea of âdefunding the policeâ provokes a response that is immediately defensive and fear-based,â NC4RJ said in an email. âBut there are other people in our community, especially young people, who are excited about the possibilities that would become available to us if we invested in other methods of creating safety.âÂ