LCC Board of Education Testimony — October 7, 2026

Here are my remarks made before the Lane Community College Board of Education on October 7, 2026

Members of the Board, President Bulger, President Hadley: Good evening.

My name is Jim Arnold. I am a retired college administrator and former part-time LCC faculty member.

I’m here tonight to speak about the College’s treatment of Richard Riordan. On Sunday, I emailed you my essay summarizing the federal court’s opinion. I hope you had time to review it.

To summarize, briefly:

Richard repeatedly criticized LCC administrators and you, the Board, over program cuts, budget decisions and the data used to defend them. The College responded by banning him from seven properties and blocking his registration until the end of the century.

On September 28th, U.S. District Judge Michael McShane ordered LCC to remove the enrollment hold and allow Richard to return to classes. Although the ruling was preliminary, McShane found that Richard was likely to succeed on his claim that LCC retaliated against him for speech protected by the First Amendment.

The court also found nothing in the record showing that Richard posed a threat. Judge McShane called LCC’s safety argument “anemic and unconvincing” and its sanctions “unreasonable and legally unsupported.”

My recommendations to you are straightforward.

First, commission an independent review to determine who approved the sanctions, what evidence they relied on, why Richard was NOT told what rule he had broken, and why he had no fair chance to respond. Publish the findings and require President Bulger to respond publicly.

Then act on the findings. Correct any unsupported claims in Richard’s file that could harm his education or future employment. Determine what consequences, if any, are warranted for the administrators responsible. And adopt protections requiring notice, access to evidence, a prompt hearing and a fair appeal before any extended campus ban or registration block.

But do not use the review as an excuse to delay what is already due: an immediate public apology from President Bulger and the Board to Richard and the community.

LCC cannot claim to value free speech while punishing criticism that makes its leaders merely uncomfortable. It is time to admit what went wrong, repair the harm and make sure it Never. Happens. Again.

Thank you.

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Federal Court Corrects an Injustice

Since spring 2025, I have written five essays* about Lane Community College, examining its divided Board, troubled governance, strained labor relations, budget choices and loss of public trust. Unfortunately, evidence of institutional dysfunction continues to mount. The latest example concerns the College’s treatment of an outspoken student and a Federal judge’s response. It raises basic questions about free speech, administrative power and accountability.

Richard Riordan is an LCC student who challenged the administration and the Board of Education at public meetings and via email. He questioned program cuts, budget decisions and the data used to defend them. LCC responded by banning him from seven college properties and blocking him from registering for classes. On September 28, U.S. District Judge Michael McShane ordered LCC to remove the registration hold and let Riordan return to campus for academic purposes.

The College called these actions a trespass notice and an enrollment hold, bureaucratic labels that obscure their severity. Riordan risked arrest and prosecution if he entered LCC property. His enrollment hold was set to last until December 31, 2099. In practical terms, LCC had expelled him for life.

This ruling is not final. It is a preliminary injunction, an order that applies while the lawsuit continues. Even so, McShane found that Riordan is likely to succeed on his claim that LCC retaliated against him for speech protected by the First Amendment. That is a serious rebuke to President Stephanie Bulger, her administration and LCC’s elected Board.

I am a retired college administrator and former part-time LCC faculty member. Though not a lawyer, I read McShane’s opinion closely and attended every Board meeting where Riordan spoke during public comment. I found him outspoken, rambling, persistent and often sarcastic. McShane described him as “annoying, long-winded, aggressive, hyperbolic, and grandiose.”

But the judge also found “nothing in the record” showing that Riordan posed a threat. He said Riordan’s statements were hyperbole, jokes and political rhetoric, not real threats of violence.

The court’s account of LCC’s response is troubling. During a campus conversation about an upcoming Board meeting, Riordan told Vice President Shelley Tinkham he was “ready for the spin.” Public Safety Director Lisa Rupp then filed a report on Tinkham’s behalf claiming Riordan had “accosted” her. LCC’s Threat Assessment Team then began monitoring Riordan without his knowledge. Dean Carl Yeh and Rupp later told him to stop sending mass emails and to “be careful,” but did not identify any college rule he had broken.

LCC also relied on an email meme and Riordan’s self-deprecating comparison of his writing to a “drive-by shooting.” McShane found that the College took those statements out of context and turned them into threats. He wrote that LCC’s misrepresentation “approaches dishonesty” and said the College appeared to be “covertly building a case” against Riordan.

The judge was just as direct about the harm LCC caused. He wrote that its actions effectively expelled Riordan and would discourage an ordinary person from speaking out. He called LCC’s safety argument “anemic and unconvincing” and its sanctions “unreasonable and legally unsupported.” He said the College’s conduct looked “much like blacklisting.”

McShane accepted that some officials may truly have been afraid. But feeling afraid is not proof that someone poses a threat. The judge allowed Riordan to return for classes but barred him from attending Board meetings in person or approaching the officials named in the suit. He said those limits were meant to calm the situation, not to suggest LCC’s fears had an objective basis.

That difference matters. LCC must act when a threat is credible. But fear alone cannot turn protected political speech into threatening conduct. Before punishing a student, the College must consider the student’s words in context and separate discomfort from a serious threat of violence. Officials may need to remove a student briefly when there is credible evidence of immediate danger. Any longer campus ban or registration block should require written notice, access to the evidence, a prompt hearing and a fair appeal.

Those safeguards are necessary, but they are not enough. President Bulger is responsible for the administration she leads. If she approved these actions, she must answer for a serious abuse of power. If she did not know senior officials were building a case against a student critic and pushing him out of college, then she failed to supervise them. Neither explanation is acceptable.

The Board should commission an independent review to determine who approved the sanctions, what evidence they relied on, why Riordan was not clearly told what rule he had broken and why he had no fair chance to respond. The findings should be made public, and Bulger should be required to answer them.

The Board must then act on those findings. LCC should correct any unsupported claims in Riordan’s records that could hurt his education or employment. The Board should also determine what consequences, if any, are warranted for the officials responsible.

But an independent review should not become an excuse to delay what is already due: a sincere public apology from Bulger and the Board to Riordan and the community. Accountability requires admitting what went wrong, repairing the harm and making sure it does not happen again. Until Bulger and the Board do that, LCC’s claims to value free speech and student rights will ring hollow.

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*Here are links to those five publications.

“LCC Board Vote.” Eugene Weekly, April 17, 2025.

 “Solving the LCC Board.” Eugene Weekly, October 10, 2025.

 “No Confidence.” Eugene Weekly, November 25, 2025.

 “Criticism of LCC Faculty Union Ignores the Deeper Issues.” Lookout Eugene-Springfield, November 2, 2025.

 “Higher Education and the Long Shadow of Oregon Ballot Measure 5.” Lookout Eugene-Springfield, June 3, 2026.

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My Own Clock

For most of my adult life, I believed I was a morning person. Whether I was working as a chemist in my twenties, attending graduate school in counseling in my thirties, teaching while completing my Ph.D. at Indiana University in my forties, or later serving as a college administrator, I was typically up and at ’em by 5:30 a.m. I assumed that was simply who I was: an early riser, a morning person. It has taken retirement to make me question whether the clock I lived by for so long was ever really my own.

As I look back, I recognize that my sleep pattern was among many rituals which remained remarkably consistent throughout my professional life. For example, I often stopped for breakfast on the way to work before arriving at an office that was mostly empty. How I valued that quiet first hour. The phone wasn’t ringing. Meetings hadn’t begun. No one was standing in the doorway with an urgent question. It gave me time to get oriented before the demands of the day took over.

I recall that during my years at IU, associate instructors could request the sections we wanted to teach. I always chose the 8:00 a.m. classes. Most of my graduate-student peers preferred something later, and undergraduates weren’t especially enthusiastic about early mornings either (an obvious understatement). That suited me just fine. I loved beginning the day before campus had fully awakened.

Then there was another idiosyncratic practice of mine. For years, on the left side of my desk, I kept a stack of papers. The issues demanding the most immediate attention were always on top. I continually shuffled them, working my way down as the day allowed. Those near the bottom sometimes waited for days or even weeks. More than once, a problem resolved itself before I ever reached it. (That strategy, in itself, continues to serve as a valuable personal and professional axiom: not every problem requires immediate action, and some require no action at all.) Like my early mornings, that stack became part of the architecture of my days.

Of course, there were occasional outside interruptions to my rhythms. Beginning in the late 1990s, an enlarged prostate led to increasingly problematic sleep. Four or five trips to the bathroom each night became routine. A TURP (the “roto-rooter” prostate surgery) procedure in 2011 helped enormously, but years of interrupted sleep had trained my body to wake repeatedly. Even after this medical issue improved, the habit of frequent awakenings lingered. But throughout it all, I remained an early riser.

Ultimately, retirement had its impact on my lifestyle. While there was no conscious decision to sleep in later, there simply was no longer a reason to get up before dawn. Without really intending it, I began getting up a little later. And then later.

Today I’m usually asleep by 10:00 and awake around 7:30, about two hours more sleep than during most of my working life. At age seventy-nine, I now sleep considerably more than I once did. That surprised me because I’d always heard that older adults need less sleep. Curious, I did a little reading and discovered the research isn’t nearly as settled as the popular wisdom suggests.

While I was at IU, one of my closest friends seemed to function quite well on four or five hours of sleep each night, but I always needed much more. We were both a little skeptical of the other’s sleeping habits. I couldn’t imagine getting by on so little sleep, and he probably thought I was a slacker. Looking back, I guess each of us believed our own rhythms to be the “normal” ones.

What has stayed with me, though, isn’t the research itself or the sleeping habits of others. Rather, different questions altogether poke through. If my body now prefers a schedule so unlike the one I had followed through most of my adult life, what’s changed? Has retirement simply given me permission to sleep more? Or had I spent decades assuming that my work schedule reflected my natural rhythm when, in fact, I had gradually adapted myself to the rhythms of the institutions where I worked?

For more than half a century, my life was organized around the schedules of schools, colleges, and universities. Over time, those rhythms became so familiar that I stopped noticing they belonged to the institutions where I worked. I experienced them as my own. I believed I was someone who naturally woke at 5:30 every morning. Maybe I was. Or maybe I had simply spent decades living by rhythms that were never entirely mine?

Interestingly, although I sleep longer now, I still keep a pile of papers on the left side of my desk. Today’s stack has little to do with budgets, personnel issues, or committee meetings, though. Instead, it contains notes for upcoming doctor appointments, insurance forms, and, at the moment, a draft of my will waiting to be finalized and signed.

I suppose that’s what retirement has given me. Not simply more time, but a different relationship to time. For most of my adult life, my days began because they had to. Today they begin when I’m ready. Whether that means I truly need more sleep or have finally been allowed to get the sleep I’ve always needed, I don’t know. But after all these years, I’m no longer quite so certain that I ever really understood my own clock.

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Soundtrack Suggestion

Time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is

Now you all were saying that you want to be free
But you’ll come runnin’ back (I said you would baby)
You’ll come runnin’ back (like I told you so many times before)
You’ll come runnin’ back to me, yeah

Time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is

(“Time Is On My Side” — Rolling Stones)

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LCC Board of Education Testimony — June 3, 2026

Here are my remarks made before the Lane Community College Board of Education on June 3, 2026

Chair Folnagy, members of the Board, President Bulger, President Olson: good evening. My name is Jim Arnold and you now know me as a member of the Budget Committee. Thank you, Trustee Rust, for your nomination and your support.

I sent you all an email about this earlier today, so you may be aware that I published a Guest Column in the Lookout inspired by our recent Budget Committee deliberations. Specifically, the catalyst was last week’s discussion about tuition and whether or not to revisit an earlier Board decision.

I wrote the article for a number of reasons. Partly, I wanted to provide some historical context. Many Oregonians, especially younger ones, have little or no awareness of Measure 5 or the profound effect it has had on the funding of public education. Many of the budget pressures we discuss today did not just suddenly appear. They are connected to decisions that were made decades ago.

And I wanted to step back and look at another large issue, for I believe that discussions about tuition are never really just about percentages. Beneath them is a more fundamental question about who benefits from higher education and who should bear the costs.

But also let me mention something else that stayed with me after last Wednesday’s meeting, which was not so much the outcome as the process.

Students came forward and spoke about the impact tuition has had on their lives. Committee members asked questions. Different viewpoints were expressed. People disagreed. Then the committee voted.

Now, that may not sound all that remarkable, but I think it is worth acknowledging. Public institutions are supposed to create space for such conversations. The process does not guarantee agreement, but it does give us an opportunity to surface often unspoken assumptions.

Having spent much of my life in higher education, I can remember a time when the public discussion was framed somewhat differently than it is today. Back in my early days, students certainly benefited from earning degrees and improving their career opportunities, but there was a widespread understanding that society benefited as well.

Over time, as we all know, more and more of the cost of instruction has shifted to students and their families. That shift did not originate at Lane Community College nor with this Board.

Understanding how we arrived here may not solve our budget challenges, but it can help us have a more informed conversation about them.

Thank you.

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Measure 5’s Long Shadow

I was recently appointed to the Lane Community College Budget Committee by the Board of Trustees, though late enough in the year that I only participated in the final three meetings. As far as entries into an established group go, mine was a little clunky. During my first meeting, no one acknowledged the new member in the room and, during the roll call vote, my name was omitted entirely.

Still … three meetings were enough time for me to notice a larger story hiding underneath the spreadsheets.

For those unfamiliar with the process, Oregon community college budget committees are composed of elected Board members plus an equal number of other citizens from the district, appointed by the Board. Their charge is to review the proposed budget, hear public comment, examine the assumptions behind the numbers, and ultimately recommend a budget to the Board for final approval.

This year’s discussions were unusually prolonged and, while mostly civil, occasionally bordered on contentious; there were some close votes. Lane’s proposed FY27 budget comes on the heels of mid-year class cancellations, a mitigation plan involving program closures, and broader concerns about the institution’s long-term financial condition. One recurring issue involved tuition.

Earlier in this academic year, the Board had approved a tuition increase of just 1.2%, considerably below the current rate of inflation. Then, during the final night of deliberations on May 27, Trustee Zach Mulholland proposed revisiting that earlier decision and raising the increase to 2.1% in order to help offset anticipated future shortfalls. I seconded the motion, not because I had fully embraced the proposal, but because I believed the issue deserved public discussion.

The motion failed overwhelmingly, and in the end I voted against it myself.

But what stayed with me afterward was not the outcome of the debate. It was the realization that an important part of the conversation had gone largely unspoken, and that I had failed to voice it myself. We discussed tuition levels, budget pressures, and projected shortfalls, but almost entirely in the language of present-day necessity, with little acknowledgment that Oregon’s higher education funding problems have been shaped by political and economic choices stretching back decades.

To understand why tuition debates at Oregon colleges now carry such weight, we have to go back to Ballot Measure 5.

Passed by voters in 1990, Measure 5 dramatically limited property taxes in Oregon. In many respects it mirrored California’s Proposition 13, reflecting the anti-tax politics that swept through much of the West during the late 1970s and 80s. Supporters argued that homeowners, including retirees on fixed incomes, needed protection from rapidly rising property taxes. That concern was understandable enough, but the long-term consequences for public education proved to be immense.

Before Measure 5, local property taxes played a major role in supporting schools and community colleges. Once those revenues were capped, the state assumed far greater responsibility for financing K-12 education. The difficulty was that state revenues were never really sufficient to fully support both K-12 and higher education at previous levels. Over time, political pressure understandably favored protecting primary and secondary education as much as possible, while colleges and universities were increasingly expected to generate their revenue from other sources. That meant: student tuition hikes.

The shift happened gradually enough that people barely noticed it occurring. One tuition increase did not fundamentally change the system. Neither did the next one. But year after year, decade after decade, the cumulative effect has been truly profound. Public higher education has slowly evolved from something funded primarily by the broader public into something increasingly financed by students themselves.

When I first entered higher education, way too many years ago now, the dominant philosophy was that colleges served a broad public purpose. An educated population strengthened communities, employers, civic institutions, and democracy itself. Students obviously benefited personally from earning degrees and improving their employment opportunities, but society benefited as well. The costs, therefore, were understood as something to be shared collectively.

Over time, however, the dominant cultural and philosophical view of higher education shifted. College increasingly came to be framed less as a public investment and more as a private consumer commodity. If students would eventually earn more money because of their education, then they should bear most of the financial responsibility for obtaining it.

At one level, this argument has a certain logic to it. Students absolutely do reap the benefits from their higher education. But the argument conveniently overlooks the larger public decisions that constrained educational funding in the first place. We, and I mean we taxpayers and voters, collectively shrunk the revenue source that once supported public colleges and universities, then gradually shifted more of the resulting burden onto students and their families.

That reality sat quietly underneath the Budget Committee discussions at Lane, even though no one acknowledged this out loud.

During public comment time, students did argue passionately against tuition increases, and understandably so. Many are already balancing work, rent, food insecurity, housing insecurity, childcare, transportation costs, and/or debt. Even relatively modest tuition increases can feel overwhelming when they are already living close to the financial edge. At the same time, the institution itself faces legitimate fiscal pressures involving bargaining agreements, deferred maintenance, enrollment shifts, program sustainability, and a looming demographic cliff. The math driving these discussions is real.

But arithmetic alone does not explain why Oregon students now shoulder so much of the cost of public higher education. That outcome reflects a more profound, and largely-unspoken decision about who benefits from higher education and who should pay for it.

For decades now, Oregon has largely answered that question by shifting more of the responsibility onto students themselves. The budget-development process and Board decision-making at Lane did not create this reality. 

In the end, here’s how I see it: tuition debates are never simply about percentages. They are arguments about public priorities, generational obligations, and the extent to which society still views higher education as a shared public good rather than merely a private economic transaction.

These are larger issues than any single Budget Committee can resolve in any single year. But they are questions worth acknowledging explicitly, especially when the bill increasingly arrives in the hands of students.

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Soundtrack Suggestion

Let me tell you how it will be
There’s one for you, nineteen for me
’Cause I’m the taxman
Yeah, I’m the taxman

(“Taxman” — Beatles)

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Update on June 3, 2026:

This essay, in a slightly-edited form, was published as a Guest Column in the Lookout Eugene-Springfield today.

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