Especially ironic for a school boasting the Beavers as its mascot.

Lolz

Reading the various sides of this hullabaoloo, I'm blaming the organizers of the conference. OSU is in the correct to be able to make decisions of where they want to spend their money. Taormino dealt with the organizers in good faith and made monetary decisions based on what the organizers told her. It was the organizers who promised more than they could deliver. It was the organizers who thought they could spend other people's money. It's the organizers who aren't offering up their own explanations.

Taormino is trying to make this seem like a Free Speech issue. It's not. OSU just doesn't want to pay her. She didn't even have a contract to talk and bought her tickets on the faith that the school would pay her. If she showed up at OSU and gave a lecture in their quad, she could.


What she needs is to either get a better manager or deal with more reputable organizations. She should also engage the services of legal counsel to obtain damages and that sort of thing.

she went to Willamette and people were cool with it. so she's not too controversial for Oregon, just corvallis.

Is this what we're indignant about today?

I mean, this is also the school with drunken football players showing up naked in married couples' apartments and stealing sheep from farms.

@Graham - She says that she DID have a contract, in the 6th paragraph. With the school, in fact, not with some other organizing party.

This is wrong, especially in a state with such a strong tradition of free speech, and with the laws to back it up. At least it sounds like they'll pay for Taormina's ticket, and she can get some publicity out of this.

They could've hit up some well-heeled but open-minded OSU alumnus (there must be at least one) to pay the fee if they're worried about conservative legislators criticising the funding. If there was still an issue OSU would look podunk indeed, considering where Taormina has spoken before.

Oh, well, maybe OSU can get Snooki to come speak someday...she might make a better match for the school, while Taormina can stick to speaking at serious institutions of higher learning.

@Blabby: No, we're also pissed about people who use Simpsons characters for their icons.

@Reymont: Wrong. She was in contract negotiations. I don't know why Smirk is posting erroneous information about the existance of a finalized and signed contract; but Taormino's press release makes it fairly clear that no such contract existed.

@Graham: I BELIEVE IN SMIRK! STOP RUINING IT WITH YOUR "FACTS" THAT YOU GOT FROM "RESEARCH!"

She had a contract that has received verbal approval and was going through the administrative process of finalisation. In law, that's as good as a signed contract. Now, whether the people who had made the verbal contract had the authority to do this is another question.

This isn't a censorship issue (the government isn't actually involved with a priori restraint of publication or expression) but it is a free speech issue. It just makes the university look unprofessional, disorganised, and frankly puritanical and scared of its own shadow. They certainly didn't do themselves any favours in the eyes of the public here: so they'll attract more evangelical hicks and scare away the cosmopolitan people that make a university attractive. Well done.

Now all those students are going to be fucking each other in the ass wrong. Smooth move, OSU.

Graham and Reymont,
You're both right, sort of. She had a written contract that was sent through the first stages of approval, but never got the final sign-off from the higher ups. She says that's pretty typical and that things often fall into place right before an event, so with the date approaching, she went ahead and bought her ticket.

@ UPDATE 2

Did you really need to "Rub it in?"

With that list of other topics, it's hard to believe that Claiming your Sexual Power would be considered porn.

i agree with comment above maybe snooki should come ..lol

http://OneHotNight.com