UA messes with FIRE, gets burned
While the university has long cried foul to David Horowitz’s jeremiads (not, as Ben Kalafut points out, entirely without cause), the school apparently engaged in quite a bit of chicanery of its own behind the scenes of his Tucson visit. From the blog of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE):
Horowitz spoke on April 7 at an event sponsored by the College Republicans. A few days before the event, the Dean of Students Office contacted the University of Arizona Police Department (UAPD) regarding security for the event. On April 3, UAPD Commander Robert Sommerfeld informed College Republicans President Ryan Ellison that if the group did not request two UAPD officers for security at the event, he would recommend that the event be shut down. In order to avoid having the event canceled, the College Republicans acceded to the UAPD’s demand.
The event proceeded without any problems, and on April 19 the group received an invoice of $384.72 for the security. A June 8 e-mail from Anjelica Yrigoyen, Special Event Coordinator for the UAPD, specifically linked the security fee to the controversial nature of the event.
After being pressured to pay the bill, the College Republicans turned to FIRE for help. On June 10, FIRE wrote University of Arizona President Robert N. Shelton, pointing out that any requirement that student organizations hosting controversial events pay for extra security is unconstitutional because it affixes a price tag to events on the basis of their expressive content. FIRE cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement (1992), which states, “Listeners’ reaction to speech is not a content-neutral basis for regulation. … Speech cannot be financially burdened, any more than it can be punished or banned, simply because it might offend a hostile mob.”
FIRE’s letter to President Shelton (among others) offers a comprehensive summary of the problem, as well as an overview of the legal precedent . Thankfully, FIRE’s legal threats prevailed, and the UAPD decided to “absorb the charges.” Lest you think that the UA is a stalwart of civil liberties, the release reminds us that the school is simply following in the footsteps of its predecessors:
The University of Arizona therefore joins the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of California, Berkeley, each of which this year has recognized the Forsyth precedent and has refunded excessive security fees after intervention by FIRE.
Still, it’s nice to know that in this case, the UA adheres to the rules, rather than defying them. Kudos to the CRs for challenging the charge.
The sacred fire of liberty: a message for the Fourth
This Saturday marks the 233rd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a day that John Adams declared:
. . . ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.
Unfortunately, Arizonans will not be fully joining in such “pomp and parade.” Arizona is the only state West of the Mississippi that bans all pyrotechnic fireworks to her citizens; it joins Delaware, Maine, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island as the only states to do so in the nation.
Why does Arizona think her citizens so much weaker and in need of paternal protection than those in New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California, Colorado, and 40 other states? Why did Govs. Symington and Hull (both Republicans) both veto legislation that would have restored this liberty to her citizens?
The answer, inevitably, is safety. Benjamin Franklin’s famous edict has all but been forgotten in the urge to protect Arizona citizens from themselves. Their hand-wringing is made difficult by the paucity of finding an actual fireworks menace, when the annual number of fireworks injuries in the United States is barely higher 9,200, and related deaths only 11. In comparison, more people have died from “contact with powered lawn mower,” “fall involving bed,” or falls involving “ice-skates, skis, roller-skates, or skateboards.” So far, this has not led to bans on power lawn mowers, bunk beds, or skate parks. In desperation, the Forces That Be have brought out one Matt Crosbie as the poster child for maintaining the ban:
After the series of explosions, Matt Crosbie forced his way out of the car. When he looked down, he saw the skin peeling from his arms.
Flashes of smoke, flames and burned flesh were the result of Crosbie’s attempt to launch mortar-like fireworks out the window of a moving car days before his high-school graduation. One of the explosives he fired from a cardboard tube bounced back into the vehicle, igniting more fireworks and leaving the car engulfed in flames. [emphasis added]
. . .
Crosbie, who recently joined firefighters to speak out against the bill, said he was inspired to serve as a burn-victim advocate after his rehabilitation.
“I’ve had 30 surgeries, plenty of skin grafts,” said Crosbie, now 23. “I guess you could say I’m scarred for life because of this.”
In other words – because Mr. Crosbie has proven himself incapable of using fireworks properly, it therefore follows that no one in the state can use fireworks properly. If we allow for fireworks in this state, everyone will start firing mortars out of their moving vehicles. Not discussed is the inconvenient fact that Mr. Crosbie managed to obtain “mortar-like fireworks” in spite of the state’s stringent ban. Meanwhile, as stringent budget cuts are debated in Phoenix, law enforcement officers will be on high alert this weekend for fireworks smugglers.
You should be careful – which is a nice way of saying don’t be stupid. Don’t fire mortars out of a moving vehicle. Don’t give your three-year-old a burning sparkler and walk inside. Don’t start bottle rocket fights with the neighbors. Don’t try lighting an M-80 on your kitchen stove.
But it is a distinctly un-American approach to argue, as the CDC does, that “fireworks should be left to the professionals.” This is exactly the same impulse that has been used against democratic impulses and individual liberty for eons – it is no accident that President George Washington, describing government, said that, “[l]ike fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Just as British considered the colonists too immature to handle self-government, so our current government – ostensibly, the one still based in part on the Ninth Amendment – finds us too incompetent to handle sparklers and bottle rockets. In attempting to protect ourselves from the fearsome burn of the sparkler, we find ourselves scorched with mandarin diktats.
Thankfully, HB 2258 – sponsored by Rep. Andy Biggs (R) – has made it through the Legislature and onto Governor Brewer’s desk; seeing how she played with sparklers as a child, she will probably have the good sense to sign the bill. This bill allows for the legal possession of sparklers and other small fireworks. It won’t, unfortunately, go into effect in time for this year’s festivities. But it is a good start, hopefully one towards restoring the liberties that most Americans – and all Westerners – enjoy.
The only thing more impressive, more amazing, and more praiseworthy than the epic shows of Disneyland and DC are the small shows staged in backyards and back roads across the country. Far better to celebrate the Fourth by exercising those liberties so painfully won, rather than slavishly following the concern-mongering of the state. Bureaucrats may find such a celebration petty and worthy of scorn; thus have they always viewed the accomplishments of individuals.
This Saturday, the Desert Lamp urges you to follow in the footsteps of those that fought for these liberties. Get drunk, blow things up, and openly question the “swarm of Officers” that tell you otherwise. (Although, really, why just Saturday?)
Privately Funded, Publicly Provided: The Mineral Museum
Remember when President Shelton singled out the UA Mineral Museum for cuts in this press release? Thanks to private industry, the gem of the UA’s museum outreach efforts will remain for now:
The University of Arizona Mineral Museum will continue to be open to the public due to the generous financial assistance of the Freeport-McMoRan Foundation and an anonymous donor. The museum, located inside Flandrau: The UA Science Center, will be open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. and on Tuesdays through Fridays from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. for field trips by reservation only.
. . .
Former president and chief operating officer of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Timothy R. Snider, said, “Our relationship with the UA goes back a long, long time – back to the origins of both our institutions – and we are honored to provide support in several ways. This gift will help to create an environment for the public to become more informed about natural resources.”
To elaborate on Snider’s point, here’s a passage from The Lamp in the Desert on the first time Big Mineral gave the university a helping hand, back around the turn of the twentieth century:
Probably to Barnsfeld’s surprise, the shot paid off a year later when Dr. James Douglas, on behalf of the Copper Queen Company, gave the University $10,000 with instructions to use the income in the purchase of instruments for scientific research of special equipment necessary for the proper instruction of students in the department of mineralogy and the School of Mines. So far as available records show, this was the first research grant made to the University. [emphasis added - EML]
Why concealed-carry on campus matters
A few days after Heller Day, the state of Arizona receives some good news from the legislature: the “deadly legal fiction” of the gun-free campus may soon come to an end. From the Sierra Vista Herald:
PHOENIX — Saying it will make people safer, state senators voted Friday to let people with concealed weapons permits carry them onto college and university campuses where they are now forbidden.
The 15-6 vote on the provision in HB 2439 came after backers said they believe that having people who are licensed by the state to have weapons should cut down on the number of massacres that occur on campuses. And Sen. John Huppenthal, R-Chandler, said that has happened in Arizona.
While this vote is promising, I am leery of this kind of consequentialist argument. Both sides use black swan events – the VaTechs and Columbines of the world – to draw conclusions that fit their own predetermined views on the issue. Both sides engage in wild rhetoric about stopping or starting crime, when in fact the limited case studies in Utah, Colorado, and Virginia have shown an essentially negligible impact on crime.
This is probably a result of the overall low ownership of guns by college students. According to a 2002 study [PDF], for every thousand college students in the Mountain region (Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, and Montana) there are an estimated sixteen students that own a gun for personal protection. Assuming this proportion holds for the UA (which is a dubious proposition, as Arizona’s overall gun ownership rate was the lowest in the Mountain region, according to this survey), there would be approximately 609 students – graduate and undergraduate – with firearms. Yet this number is too inflated, for considering it in light of this bill assumes that (a) every student that owns a weapon will carry it on campus; (b) every student that owns a weapon has a concealed-carry permit as well; and (c) none of these students are involved in a ROTC program.
Yet there is a bigger issue at stake at stake here, removed from crime-busting conceit; to steal from Randy Barnett, the presumption of liberty. The amendment that really needs to be discussed is not the second amendment, but the all-too-forgotten Ninth:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The Arizona Constitution has a nearly equivalent passage in its Declaration of Rights:
Section 33. The enumeration in this Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny others retained by the people.
Underlying these passages is a profound declaration of a very libertarian principle: individuals have more rights than the state can ever possibly list. To institute a ban – be it on access to pornographic materials, the possession on public property of a gun by a concealed-carry permit holder, or marijuana by a patient with a prescription – the state must offer a compelling societal reason to suppress that liberty. Just as the defendant in a court of law is innocent until proven guilty, so an individual right exists until proven not to. (Ideally, such a “case” would be conducted under the same standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But we’ll take “compelling evidence.”) In this case, the prosecution against liberty has simply failed, resorting to little more than public hand-wringing, devoid of facts.
Even further, the right to bear arms is in fact an enumerated right. Justice Scalia delivered a lexicographical body-slam on the anti-gun “militia” interpretation in Heller v. DC, but more applicable to the state of Arizona is her own constitution, which reads (Art. 2, Sec. 26):
The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the state shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain, or employ an armed body of men.
We should not be surprised that the UA is actually using its lobbyists to fight against this bill, but it is nice to see the UAPD be so forthright about their argument:
University of Arizona lobbyist Greg Fahey said his school opposes allowing anyone to have guns on campus. And Fahey said he’s not convinced that rule should be waived for those with permits to carry concealed weapons even though they have undergone background checks, training in state laws and been shown to be proficient in the use of the gun.
“Our chief of police and the police of all three universities have consistently said that their experience is that having people with guns is just more of an invitation to have accidents, to have problems,’’ Fahey said. “And they don’t want anyone who’s not a sworn officer being armed on campus.’’ [emphasis added - EML]
Never mind that it was this same UAPD – to whom we are supposed to surrender our Section 26 rights – headquartered about 300 feet away from a drive-by shooting, back in 2006. Government is a monopoly, and it hates competition.
NB: This opposition, however, raises an interesting scenario: while the university insists that it needs as much money as possible from the state, it refuses to adhere to the provisions set out by that same state. Like a surly adolescent, it wants all of the parents’ money with none of the responsibility to household rules. A hypothetical then is raised: how much state funding is the university willing to sacrifice in order to maintain its “deadly legal fiction”? $1 million? $5 million?
Previous Lamp coverage of guns on campus can be accessed here, here, and here. Image courtesy of Flickr user SigEp NV Alpha ‘03
The People’s Fronts of Arizona
The latest story of education protests against DETH credits the Arizona Education Association with leading the demonstration. Yet the AEA is just the oldest of many organizations that have been formed to lobby on education’s behalf. We’ve already discussed the Arizona Economic Council. They stand alongside the university-backed Expect More Arizona, as well as the new-media-loving Stand Up for Arizona, the front group of former Arizona Democratic Party chairman Jim Pederson. Then, of course, there’s the Arizona Students Association, the lobbyists on the university’s payroll, and so on. Surely these groups approach education from varied approaches; but at the same time, it doesn’t exactly make for an effective lobbying push. It also doesn’t help that none of the groups seem to recognize the existence of the others, whether on their list of links or their press releases.
But all this underscores the bigger point; namely, that the “education lobby” as a unified force is a fleeting phenomenon. Budget maximalization works as a unifying force, just as the Romans provided a popular common enemy for the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front. (”But I thought we were the Populist Front!”) Even now it’s not apparent why, say, Arizona’s community colleges aren’t lobbying for funding at the expense of other university budgets. In fact, this has already happened in the state of Pennsylvania:
Gov. Ed Rendell removed four state-related universities from Pennsylvania’s application for federal stimulus money to help public higher education, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
The preliminary federal-aid application had earmarked nearly $40-million for Pennsylvania State University, Temple University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Lincoln University. But a revised application, made public Friday, would cost Penn State $20-million, Temple $11-million, Pitt $10-million, and Lincoln $870,000. The money would instead go to other state universities and community colleges.
Naturally, the universities mentioned oppose this cut. But can they honestly say that they are doing so in the name of ‘education’? In times of decreased funding, such divergences will soon be more, rather than less, apparent.
–
Also, bonus quote of the day:
Fourth-grade teacher Liza Green held a sign that said: “Sen. Harper: I’m a trough feeder and I vote!”
Ever thus to democracies, Lebowski.
Obligatory Monty Python video can be accessed here.
A military-industrial education
We’ve alluded earlier to the odd love of Raytheon exhibited by leaders at the UA. Now, the UA-Raytheon flirtation has gone to the next level, with a coauthored editorial in the Daily Star by President Shelton and Taylor Lawrence, president of the Missile Systems Division of Raytheon. The hundreds of UA jobs that Shelton and Lawrence cite go towards the creation of products like the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), the AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile), and the AGM-65 Maverick.
This isn’t to say that Raytheon, by forging the spears, is guilty of Agamemnon’s crimes. So long as there is active demand for missiles (which, with the Obama administration, there certainly is), there will be an active supply. But for an institution that prides itself on striving to “improve the human condition,” there is a noticeable lack of questioning from the university as to whether UA-Raytheon is really the kind of satellite campus they were looking for. All must be sacrificed on the altar of “job creation,” and that includes educational missions.
One also must wonder at Raytheon’s insatiable appetite for government money. The editorial starts with a slobbering paean to the space program, that sole federal program that a majority of Americans have said they want to cut; it ends with the BioSphere, a monument to the juche of FAIL. A full 80 percent of Raytheon’s sales come courtesy of the federal government, a percentage that doesn’t account for money spent by foreign governments – like Saudia Arabia! – for its goods. Amusingly enough, this makes Raytheon more dependent on government spending than the university; and still, by Lawrence’s measure, this is not enough. So the corporatist wheel turns . . .
The editorial itself would be largely forgettable if it weren’t for this waterboarding of logic in the middle of an argument for more state spending:
The vast majority of the $530 million in funding for research last year at UA came from outside Arizona (primarily from the federal government). These funds from Washington are creating jobs in Arizona. By any measure, that is good for our state. Indeed, the most current data for BIO5 and the College of Optical Sciences show a return on investment from research funding of more than 5 to 1. There are not many investments that offer a greater return than that.
In other words: state funding has very little to do with funding research, the same research responsible for jobs. Seeing how Washington is planning on ramping up its spending on education (among a few other things), there thus is no reason for the state of Arizona to do anything but sit on its hands. I suppose it’s nice for Babylon on the Potomac to shower us with ArneBucks, if you’re into that whole “record deficits” thing. It is, however, an irrelevant aside when it comes to the current debate over the state budget.
This UA-Raytheon alliance, which has gone beyond marriage of convenience and into full-fledged lovefest mode, looks askance at both those who believe that the university is a powerful agent of change in the world, and those who think that the school is a country club of peaceniks. In actuality, it is a quasi-independent arm of the bureaucracy, fighting in a typically Nikansenian way to maximize its budget.
Image of the FGM-148 Javelin courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons.
College drinking: worse than the war in Iraq?
The latest prohibitionist scare comes courtesy of this press release, which was duly reported without critique by both the Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed. From the Chronicle:
Despite university campaigns to discourage alcohol abuse, a new study shows that drinking-related activities among college students have increased over the last decade.
. . .
“The fact that we’re not making progress is very concerning,” said Ralph Hingson, the lead researcher and director of the institute’s division of epidemiology and prevention research. “The irony is that during this same time period, our knowledge of what works as far as intervention in this age group has increased. That knowledge isn’t yet being put into place.
The study (which can be obtained for a hefty fee here) concludes with this very professional and scholarly paragraph:
In 2005, among 18- to 24-year-olds both in college and not in college, nearly 12 million consumed five or more drinks on at least one occasion in the past month, and more than 7 million drove under the influence of alcohol in the past year. Among 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States, injuries are the leading cause of death, and alcohol is the leading contributor, being a factor in more than 5,000 deaths in that age group each year. To place that number in perspective, it exceeds the total number of U.S. soldiers who have died in the war in Iraq.
Let’s take a look at some of the graphs from the study (Citation: Hingson, R.W., Zha, W., and Weitzman, E.R. Magnitude of and Trends in Alcohol-Related Mortality and Morbidity Among U.S. College Students Ages 18-24, 1998-2005. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Supplement No. 16: 12-20, July 2009):
“Heavy episodic drinking” is the latest trendy academese for “binge drinking,” and the biggest gains are 5 percent over the course of six years – not exactly the end of the world. For all the hooplah that is raised over underage drinking, levels of binge drinking by this subset has been more or less flatline – for non-college, underage adults (consider that oxymoron), the number is on a downward trajectory.
It should be pointed out that this is not continuous, perpetual drunkenness (the school week, as we call it down here). The percentage reflects that number of adults that had five or more drinks at one point over the course of the past month – in other words, one bad night, or one celebration at the end of finals. If this is considered “risky behavior,” then the word has lost all meaning.
Yet here is the more surprising trend – for all the hand-wringing over drunk driving by young adults, every single category is on a downward trajectory. What’s more, drunk driving occurs at far higher levels among those of legal drinking age. Given these two results, one might be tempted to call this an era of responsible binge drinking. Of course, saying that a problem is actually getting less bad never results in any more funding for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA, the sponsor of the study) – thus, such studies have a tendency to emphasize the negative in their press releases.
The article instead finds a new target for rage: “unintentional, nontraffic injury deaths related to alcohol.” As the report states, “From 1998 to 2001 to 2005, the rate of unintentional alcohol-related nontraffic injury deaths among 18- to 24-year-old college students increased from 3.9 to 4.0 to 4.9 per 100,000 college students, a significant 25.6% increase (relative risk ratio [RR] = 1.23, 95% CI: 1.07-1.42).”
Naturally, there’s a caveat:
It should be noted that, relative to other unintentional injury deaths, poisoning deaths increased much more sharply among 18- to 24-year-olds between 1998 and 2005, from 779 to 2,290, nearly tripling during that period. Unintentional injury deaths other than poisonings actually declined slightly about 2%.
This is in reference to all unintentional injury deaths, not alcohol-related – and as the above table states, only 26.6 percent of this increase can be accounted for by alcohol. The proportion of alcohol-related poisoning deaths to total poisoning deaths reminds almost exactly the same. It’s worth reprinting the blustery assertions from the conclusion:
Among 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States, injuries are the leading cause of death, and alcohol is the leading contributor, being a factor in more than 5,000 deaths in that age group each year.
For starters, this last clause is a patent lie, considering their own data:
As you can see, the total number of alcohol-related injury deaths for 18-24 year-olds is 4,808 in 1998. Yet more important is what the authors neglect to mention – the fact that the increase in alcohol-related deaths is outweighed by the increase in non-alcohol related deaths. While unintentional injury deaths rose by 25 percent, alcohol related deaths only rose by 15 percent. Non-alcohol related injury deaths (row 4 values - row 5 values), by way of comparison, rose by 34 percent. (It’s the sober kids in need of intervention!) This is also a fact that can’t be explained away by drunk driving – after all, those deaths went down in relation to the total population, by 3 percent when the rate of population increase was taken into account.
Then there’s the fact that even if alcohol might be “related,” that’s quite a ways away from being directly responsible. After all, these stats don’t account for BAC – for all we know, those who died of hypothermia could’ve been drinking in an attempt to stay warm (which might help to explain the 90 percent figure for “relation”). Yet this reflects the zero-tolerance MADD approach – the moment a drop of demon liquor hits the tongue, it is responsible for all tomfoolery that comes hereafter. The rest of the sane world understands the difference between a glass of wine and a power hour.
Yet for all their skepticism of the current administration, the National Review completely suspends all doubt for the NIAAA, responding to the study with this:
While there is (justifiably) much hand-wringing about these stats, very few people seem to understand the ultimate cause. Colleges say they need more money and resources to educate students as to the consequences of excessive drinking. Commenters blame parents who “demonize” alcohol consumption. (Yes, that’s our problem — excessive parental disapproval of alcohol — when almost any high-school principal can tell you legions of tales of parent-hosted drinking parties.)
The real culprit, of course, is culture. Colleges have developed a culture of nearly unrestrained hedonism. Binge drinking isn’t an accident, it’s the entire point of the Thursday (or is it now Wednesday?) to Sunday party circuit. For the college hedonist, binge drinking facilitates the so-called “hookup culture.” And when it comes to sex, the university message is, shall we say, mixed. Do it! (but safely) is the college theme. One university, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, apparently believes that providing student-fee funding to the Roman Catholic Foundation somehow threatens the Republic, yet will throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at a student group called “Sex Out Loud.”
Do it! (but safely) is a losing message, especially when combined with a concerted effort to demonize those private religious voices that may offer alternatives to a culture that dominates campus. From the more “staid” schools like Harvard to the national champions of the party lifestyle at Florida, “do it” dominates “safely,” and the one ultimate answer — a different moral code — is simply not an option. After all, some of the same people arguing for a better path may — in their heart of hearts — not support same-sex marriage. And we can’t have that kind of voice on campus, can we?
Not only is gaymarriage going to take away your peanut-butter sandwich, but it’s also killing your kids on the road. For all this madness about colleges “creating” culture, the drunk and hedonist campus has existed, on record, since the eleventh century. The article is awesome enough to quote again:
Drinking Notes: Students in the Middle Ages had never heard of tea, coffee, or cigarettes, let alone iced frappuccinos, but alcohol was an integral feature of Oxford life, guzzled continually by students and teachers alike. Statutes even provided that students supply their professors with a decent amount of wine during examinations. At a banquet, adventurous guests might be treated to Hypocras, a supposedly aphrodisiac (and insanely expensive) cocktail of Burgundy, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and cardamom.
This drunken “do it” attitude is 500 years older than the entire Protestant movement and Montaigne’s witnessing of a gay marriage in Rome, 600 years older than the founding of the American colonies, 700 years older than Edmund Burke and the American War of Independence, 800 years older than Abraham Lincoln, 950 years older than the first Women’s Studies Program etc. etc. College drinking is, in fact, what one might call a tradition, or perhaps a “permanent thing.”
(And no, it’s not worse than the war in Iraq. What a stupid comparison.)
Soviet anti-alcohol propaganda courtesy of The Museum of Anti-Alcohol Posters.
Tyler Cowen’s advice to college administrators
Posted without comment:
1. Many mid-level schools do not yet apply rigorous quantitative analysis in reviewing their fundraising techniques; this should change.
2. Norms will shift toward a greater inequality of rewards for lower-level staff. Yet any single administrator who tries to bulldoze through a business-like, highly-incentivized solution does so at his or her peril. The shift of norms will take a long time.
3. Community colleges are in many cases turning out to be stronger competitors than are for-profits.
4. The higher education bubble has burst. The expiration of stimulus funds in 2011 will be a crushing event for many public sector universities. [see here, here, and here - EML]
5. Faculty governance is essential for tenure and curriculum decisions. But faculty governance for setting university priorities is a big mistake.
6. The value of face-to-face classroom time (discussed in Create Your Own Economy
, by the way) will prove robust. But the very best teachers of the future will take on an increasing role as editors, collage creators, and DJs. A brilliant scientist who doesn’t understand YouTube will be crippled as a teacher. Adjuncts may lead the wave of innovation here.
7. The way to be fiscally responsible is to refuse luxury projects in good times. If bad times have come it is already too late.
8. Current administrators are using stimulus funds to buy off the old interest groups, under the view that these are temporary bad times. Relative to what will come, these are “good times,” and much of that surplus ought to be put in reserve funds. That is not happening.
9. Many mid-level schools underinvest in making incremental improvements to their strong, core departments, because nobody gets much credit for that.
10. Being a good university administrator requires the right mix of idealism and cynicism and that is hard to come by.
You will respect Robert Shelton’s authoritah!
Just over three months ago, history professor Juan Garcia was appointed vice-president of instruction. President Shelton praised Garcia’s “distinguished record of leadership and academic accomplishment,” and looked forward to working with him on improving the “academic experience” for students at the UA. On Friday, President Shelton sent him this email:
Dear Juan,
As you can tell, I was copied on this email exchange. Let me be direct. The wording and tone of your email to Provost Hay – your direct superior – will not be tolerated. With this email, I am formally asking for your resignation from your administrative position. A printed letter will follow.
Robert
The background story (and the awesomely bad Comic Sans emails) come courtesy of great research from the Arizona Daily Star’s Aaron Mackey:
In the fall, Hay asked the veteran administrator to design a set of courses that could be taught in Centennial and to coordinate with several other UA departments to execute the plan.
. . .
Garcia developed a comprehensive plan for the Centennial classes that included providing additional support to students through the UA’s Office of Student Affairs.In an e-mail from her Blackberry phone on May 20, Hay informed Garcia that the project would be moved to the student affairs’ office with the final stages of the planning headed by Melissa Vito, the vice president of student affairs.
In a terse response, Garcia objected to the change, refused to meet with Vito and said it was wrong to allow a non-academic unit to oversee the program.
Terse is what polite publications use in place of “really pissed off.” The complete text of the reply:
What?!! You are joking, right? If this is not a joke, then I decline to do as you ask. I will not acquiesce to a decision that once again has excluded me from the process. At the very least I should have been consulted on a decision that will profoundly affect and infringe on my main area of responsibility. Second, the decision conveys the wrong message about my leadership on the project and all of the planning and effort that has gone into this complex undertaking thus far. Finally, I am not willing to relinquish responsibility for this project because it clearly and rightfully falls within the domain of instruction and academic affairs. Giving the Centennial Hall project to a non-instructional unit flies in the face of reason and practice. It carries with it grave implications that faculty will oppose. In short, this heavy handed, insensitive, discriminatory, and unilateral decision making on your part is going too far. This is another example of your lack of respect for me and for the office of Instruction. Juan
Juan R. Garcia
Vice President for Instruction &
Dean of University College
Now, we’re not the biggest fans of Dr. Garcia here – after all, not only was he behind the abominable “advisers fee,” but also has been one of the University College’s biggest defenders. Yet for all of his Brucean tendencies when it comes to punctuation, his core point is actually spot-on – the plan to teach classes in Centennial Hall, regardless how one feels about it, is an academic reorganization, and any “retention” initiatives that might be attached should be secondary in their scope.
At the very least, it’s a legitimate issue to raise. Yet President Shelton refused to even listen to such arguments, or at the very least to say, “Hey, Juan, simmer down, let’s reconsider,” or, “Wow, Dr. Garcia, I didn’t realize you objected so strongly – how could we improve this?” Instead, Garcia was curtly dismissed with a message that could’ve been a Twitter entry – and, what’s more, reminded of where he really stands in the university hierarchy, with the “your direct superior” line. President Shelton and Provost Hay continue the university’s fine tradition of transparency, refusing to comment to any degree with regards to the situation.
Perhaps there’s a bright side to all this though – the university might decide that the $210,000 price-tag [PDF] for a bureaucratic “Vice President for Instruction” might be a bit too pricey. An out-of-state student can dream, right?
