U of O workshop's homework: streak on golf course, object at wedding

By The Associated Press

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EUGENE, Ore. — A University of Oregon student was assigned to run naked through a golf course as part of a workshop on creatively facing fear.

He did it.

Another student at the workshop was assigned to object at a wedding.

She couldn't do it.

The workshop was taught by Dan Wieden of Wieden+Kennedy, the Portland ad agency behind Nike's "Just Do It" campaign.

Marissa Jones, a senior in journalism, complained about the workshop to school officials after she was asked last month to spoil a wedding.

"I have a roommate who is engaged," she told the Eugene Register-Guard. "If this happened at her wedding, she would be just devastated."

Jones, whose thesis at the Honors College is on ethics in advertising, also wrote about the experience in her column in the Oregon Daily Emerald, the campus newspaper.

"I should never have been asked to do something ethically wrong for a class assignment," she wrote. "I should never have been exposed to a learning environment where the instructor seemingly took advantage of his authority for his own amusement at the expense of his students."
 
Wieden has taught the workshop for the journalism school since 1992, changing its theme from year to year. He could not be reached for comment.

Tim Gleason, dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, said students were not asked to do anything illegal or unethical.

"It was a misunderstanding of the assignment," he said.

Workshop participant Joe Leineweber ran naked through Laurelwood Golf Course after the workshop. A photo of his run, which could be prosecuted as a misdemeanor, appeared in the Emerald a week ago.

"I am not here trying to challenge the perception of Marissa and Joe and the other students who were at the workshop," Gleason said. "I was not at the meetings when the assignment was done."

Jones also took Wieden's workshop last year. Then, she said, participants were assigned to apply for jobs for which they weren't qualified. Prospective employers were in on the exercise, though students weren't told that.

This year, Jones talked to a journalism professor about her ethical concerns and was urged to talk to Gleason.

"What I really felt like after our talk was that nothing was going to be done about it," she said. "It didn't appear to me he was very concerned about it."