WHEREAS the USA PATRIOT Act weakens several right-to-privacy acts and extends the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) against students, faculty and staff to conduct secret searches;

WHEREAS secret searches and record requests carried out under the USA PATRIOT Act or similar Congressional or Executive orders include student records formerly protected under Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1972 (FERPA);

WHEREAS these searches violate the privacy of property and of telephone conversations, and examine voice mail, email, internet, library, and academic records as well as University personnel files, threatening academic freedom;

WHEREAS, under the USA PATRIOT Act, government officials can order librarians and booksellers to disclose the records of patrons, under gag order, threatening academic freedom;

WHEREAS the visa restrictions and restrictions on who can do laboratory research and on what biological materials threaten the international exchange of ideas;

WHEREAS compliance with Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening (CAPPS) threatens the ability of scholars to travel both within the U.S. and abroad, and threatens to punish members of the university community on the basis of political activity unrelated to criminal or terrorist intent;

WHEREAS the University of Oregon Senate, acting as the University's Sole Governing Body for matters of Academic Policy, and the University faculty more broadly, serve as stewards of the rights of students, faculty and other members of the campus community to free intellectual inquiry;

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the University of Oregon Senate calls upon the Oregon Congressional Delegation to promote the first amendment rights, privacy rights, and traditional civil, intellectual, academic and political liberties of the University Community by seeking appropriate revision of those sections of the PATRIOT Act and other Orders or provisions of law that impose unjustifiable burdens on these rights and liberties.