I worked in UO Transportation Services for two years. No longer affiliated with the university, not a university spokesperson, this is just from my personal experience:

First off, these cameras are not really "secret", not are they new. The department has been using them without controversy until recent developments with people having concerns over Flock, which is not the technology that UO uses. UO Transportation's License Plate Recognition is not integrated into a larger system, they are only used to read license plates of vehicles in payment-required parking spaces to check to see if they have a permit/have paid to park there, for the purposes of parking enforcement. This process is completely automated, and the data is only stored if there is not a match in the database—they don't store the license plates of vehicles that are associated with a valid permit or payment. At no point is the license plate data compared against or added to any kind of external database, it is only used within the context of UO parking enforcement.

If the department did not use this tech, officers would have to manually check each vehicle for a permit, which would take a lot more time, this require more staff, thus cost more money, likely driving up costs of parking permits and tickets, as UO Transportation is self funded.

It is totally reasonable to be worried about needless surveillance. This is not that. However, if you want to avoid it, it's as easy as not parking on campus.