This legislative session, OSU engagement has been at a record high. Thousands of you wrote letters to your legislators requesting support for OSU student-athletes, who are impacted by conference realignment. Students and stakeholders participated in lobby days to support student-based initiatives. Faculty, students, and stakeholders testified on a multitude of issues and shared their experience with the legislature.

Your engagement validates the work being done across OSU to support students, innovate through research, and engage with communities throughout Oregon. This meaningful work embodies OSU and is why we are Oregon’s team!

While the legislature was only in session for 32 days, in a bipartisan manner, they moved major policy initiatives to reform Measure 110 and address Oregon’s addiction crisis, make investments in and policy changes around housing, and pass compromise legislation creating political campaign contribution limits. The legislature also made some meaningful investments and policy around higher education.

Investments

$10M for OSU student scholarships. While this is only a one-time investment and not the continued funding we requested, it is meaningful and will help us continue to support our student-athletes.

$2M to the College of Engineering for investments around semiconductors.

$1.9M to the Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Lab housed at OSU College of Veterinary Medicine for work on chronic wasting disease and zoonotic diseases

Policy Bills

Name, Image Likeness (NIL) [HB 4119]

Makes changes to Oregon’s NIL laws that strengthen protections for the university and its student-athletes. Importantly, the measure prevents the NCAA from sanctioning OSU as long as it follows Oregon’s NIL laws, and it allows OSU to directly assist student- athletes in securing NIL deals. Effective on passage.

Sexual Misconduct [HB 4164]

Technical changes to HB 3456 (2023), which included the development and dissemination of a sexual misconduct survey and the development of university policies and programming around sexual misconduct. The measure removes persons who are “seeking to enroll” from definition of “student,” repeals the requirement to offer the sexual misconduct survey to students on a leave of absence, and extends the time to make the survey available, among other fixes.

Posting Board Meetings Online [SB 1502]

Requires OSU to post video or audio recordings of its Board of Trustees meetings on its website or social media within seven days of the meetings. Exempted from this requirement are meetings held in executive session.

Education Omnibus [SB 1552]

Makes changes to several K-12 and higher education statutes. Most notably for OSU, the measure:

• requires the HECC to establish a direct admissions program for public universities.
• makes HECC the body to approve distribution changes to the Oregon Opportunity Grant through a public rulemaking process.
• clarifies that part-time faculty who “work,” not just “teach,” at an institution may be eligible for health care benefits.
• requires the HECC to conduct a forest workforce study.
• exempts Transfer Council subcommittees from public meeting requirements. 

AI Task Force [HB 4153]

Creates a 14-member task force to identify terms and definitions related to artificial intelligence that may be used in legislation. Two members will represent public universities.

Board Appointments

In the 2023 legislative session, the legislature passed SB 273, relating to university governing boards. One item in the bill was the creation of two new student positions on universities’ boards of trustees: one graduate student position and one non-voting undergraduate position. This will bring a total of three student positions to board of trustees. While these new positions do not go into effect until July 1, 2024, Governor Kotek started the process of filling these positions and made nominations for appointment during the session. The Senate confirmed the following appointments:

• Undergraduate Non-Voting Trustee:  MJ Mihro, Biology Major on a pre-veterinary track.
• Graduate Trustee: Kate Carter-Cram, PhD student in Public Policy.