United Academics: Drop anti-union, anti-university partners
2 min read
Presenter The University of Oregon is asked not to sign the next contract with Bigfoot Beverages, and to stop letting KUGN 590 call itself the ‘Radio Home of the Ducks.’ Speaking to the Board of Trustees Dec. 10, Jeff Schroeder:
Jeff Schroeder My name is Jeff Schroeder. I’m an associate professor in the Religious Studies department here at UO, and I’m a proud member of United Academics of University of Oregon. …UA President Kate Mills, I was going to share my time with her and she’s not present, due to illness. So I do have a couple points that I want to relay on her behalf and on the behalf of United Academics.
1. UO should refuse to renew the Bigfoot Beverages contract that is coming up.
Bigfoot is anti-worker and has treated striking union workers very badly for over a year. On this day, Dec. 10, the Bigfoot workers have been on strike for 468 days. This action is to protect their pensions, which is something they have had since May 1, 1957.
So please support us, support those workers, and cancel that contract.
The second issue and demand: The University of Oregon should disallow the use of UO’s branding by KUGN 590, which calls itself ‘Radio Home of the Oregon Ducks.’
That should happen until there is more oversight and accountability for their repeated attacks on University of Oregon workers, students, and administrators, attacks on higher education as a whole, and highly political content.
Again, this radio station calls itself the ‘Home of the Oregon Ducks.’ But here are some of the comments that have recently been made on broadcasting:
- Rich Valdés on March 20, 2025 regarding ICE abducting a graduate student over political beliefs, commented: Those students are the enemies of the United States. They are agents for terrorist organizations and every single one needs to be deported.
- Ben Shapiro on KUGN Radio in May said: It’s time to defund the universities.
- In April 2025, Mark Levin on the radio station said: These colleges are tax exempt and they hate us. The higher education experiment has failed. They’re not pro-American. One of my proposals was to defund the colleges and universities.
I won’t go on. There’s many statements like this. It’s not good. To the extent that it’s legally possible, we should disallow their use of the UO brand or at least make some kind of statement, a concerted effort to distance the University of Oregon from this toxic, anti-education discourse that’s being put forward in the name of Oregon Ducks.
Presenter That is Jeff Schroeder speaking for United Academics and suggesting that the UO can find better partners than Bigfoot and KUGN 590.
