No Confidence

WITH NO OTHER OPTIONS AVAILABLE, and no power at their disposal, the faculty and staff utilized the only option remaining them, even if that option’s force was purely symbolic: the no-confidence vote. Faculty, and some staff, at various campuses throughout the system passed no-confidence resolutions in both system president Ray Cross and the UW Board of Regents, using those votes to encourage the president and the regents to recommit themselves to the Wisconsin Idea and the spirit of public education. People are still debating the effects of those votes, yet one thing remains undeniable: they shifted the discussion.

The Gong Show

What if I told you that someone with responsibility literally brought a red button to a meeting? What if I told you that this person, while his subordinates were making test-run presentations, would push the button, and the words “no whining!” would be ejaculated as a sound effect? Again: this is not a metaphor. This is real.

So I’ll ask: who is this person? What do you imagine the setting to be? Are we talking about adults? Younger people? A gimmicky corporate setting? Friday night neon bowling?

No. That would be the president of the UW System, and the subordinates would be our campus chancellors, who were asked to describe the campus effects of another quarter-billion-dollar cut to state support. They were instructed not to whine (as faculty have been told not to be emotional), and upon further review, the presentations themselves were cancelled.[1] I know what you’re thinking: this can’t be true, no way; this is the president of a university system! I know; that’s what I thought as well. Here is the incident in question detailed by Nico Savidge:

“[The presentations] should be factual, not whiny,” Cross wrote in his message.

Cross insisted on this point—he said in the interview he brought a red button to the meeting to be used if he felt a chancellor was complaining too much in a presentation. When he pressed the button, a sound effect shouted, “No whining!” (emphasis mine, because wow)

What, were hand buzzers and bottles of seltzer spray unavailable? You couldn’t find someone on a unicycle to ride up and poke them in the eyes? Look, I miss Benny Hill too, but I have access to YouTube.

Still, this can’t be true. So I asked Nico on Twitter to confirm:

@ChuckRybak that’s what Cross described, yes. Did the sound effect over the phone too[2]

Can you imagine, just for a moment, being a chancellor of a university—a position with an enormous amount of responsibility to an incredibly wide range of stakeholders—and have someone interrupt you with a “no whining!” sound effect while you are trying to describe how many staff members you’ve had to lay off and what programs you’ll be cutting, with no end in sight? Would you have an existential moment of crisis where your inner voice conceded, “Oh my god, I’m an adult”? Well, I guess the “flexibility” everyone wants for chancellors doesn’t apply to their speaking without permission and an approved message.

For the record, I really respect my chancellor and want him to be able to speak freely and honestly about his responsibilities. He is far too classy ever to complain about such a stunt, but I have no class, and thus at the first press of the button, I would have immediately gone over the table.

Unfortunately, none of this is a joke.

Right now, the Board of Regents is meeting on my campus, pleasantly hosted by a great number of people they just stripped earned job protections away from. They will have the best parking spots and eat for free. A large portion of the Cloud Commons, where just two nights ago students had to wait in line past 9:00 P.M. to cast their votes, will be blocked off and reserved for this meeting—the regents will wait for nothing.

What is today’s meeting all about? The continuance of the big lie(s). Right now, a few of those include the following:

1. 1. The most important strategy for our future budgets is tone policing. Nico Savidge reported that the presentations were cancelled “after consulting with some Regents and considering, among other factors, the system’s next two-year budget.” False. Reducing money for all things public is a feature, not a bug, and more cuts are coming no matter what we say or do. Don’t believe me? I suggest you begin making regular stops over at Jake’s place,[3] where he dives into the deep, deep numbers, like this coming disaster:[4] “If the tax-season months of March and April don’t have a bounce-back and stay below trend, it will be likely that the 2016–17 fiscal year budget will have to be repaired . . . even with $726 million in unspecified lapses built into that budget.”
2. 2. We have “comparable” and “often better” tenure policies than our peers. This lie has been repeated so often that it’s moving past “big.” We don’t have tenure anymore. We wear a button that says “tenure” until that button is taken away, for any reason you can imagine. That’s been the point all along. That’s also why, whether we whine or not, whether we are emotional or not, more cuts are coming. The reason you strip away people’s job security, other than welcoming them to the twenty-first century, is to begin removing those people. That removal will be dressed up in the language of “necessity” and “tough choices,” that is, budget cuts. But I get it: the illusion of prestige will be necessary for some to come to work.

But somehow this is all a joke or a gag, worthy of a buzzer; was someone tasked with securing a “no whining” button? I can’t help but think what this models for our students and communities and whether anyone cares anymore. We did, after all, just elect a supreme court justice in Wisconsin whose main workplace qualification is intolerance. The Rebecca Bradley apologists sang a constant chorus that is relevant to this blog post: those were just college rantings, who wants to be held responsible for their silly college-age thoughts? We grow out of that.

The implication: what college students say should not be taken seriously. But not only is it our job and responsibility to take them seriously, it is our mission.

What students think and feel matters today, and it will matter tomorrow. When students interrupted the previous Board of Regents meeting with a chant of protest, the regent who was speaking at the time rolled his eyes. I was watching the live feed. He rolled his eyes at students who dared to speak out of turn. When the meeting resumed, the regents gave themselves yet another round of applause for their hard work, which amounts to a speck of dust when compared with the tenure dossiers of the faculty they swiftly moved to devalue.

So what are we being taught by our central leadership?

Speaking honestly about the effects of another round of brutal cuts is whining. Fighting to preserve job protections, which are an earned property right, is being emotional. (What, after all, is a life’s work worth anyway?) And if you’re a student, or worse, a graduate who has significant debt, learn to be responsible! And these complaints about race and gender issues . . . silly young coddled college kids.

What is the value of a coordinated message that pretends that everything is OK? At what point is it just blatantly dishonest, and who, outside of the UW, will point that out?

I’m not asking for miracles, because I’m a realist and I know what is coming. Still, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for our system president to take us seriously, to not belittle the beleaguered, to not scold the scapegoated, and to consider, just once, standing with UW employees, even if it means stepping out from behind the great “thank you” emblazoned on our flimsy, rhetorical shield.

The No-Confidence Man

So here’s where we are—the faculty at UW-Madison are considering a “no-confidence” vote in system president Ray Cross and the Board of Regents. For the record, I am not on the faculty at Madison and would not dare to offer whether this is the right course of action; that’s for them to decide. But here’s what I can say—the mere specter of such a vote has unleashed complete buffoonery and a stampede of frothing jamokies. Holy smokes. There are two popular themes at this blog, but let me iterate them just for the heck of it: (1) faculty are always to blame and (2) you won’t believe what happened since the last thing that happened.

Since the moment Pandora’s word escaped from the box of a possible no-confidence vote, we have had the Madison chancellor’s blogged response,[5] a legislator’s first response,[6] and another legislator’s not-so-veiled-threat release,[7] followed by two legislators issuing a joint falsehood[8]—all with the same themes: freedom, taxpayers, I love my family, Kohl’s cash, you’ll regret this, in the real world.

Also of note: no-confidence resolutions are a perfectly legitimate part of governance, BUT COMPLETELY NONBINDING, AND THEY LITERALLY HAVE ZERO IMPACT ON POLICY! But as we like to say at my home, whatevs.

In other words, WHEREAS I might have some shit to say, and WHEREAS I’m saying that shit right now, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that you don’t have to listen to me or do anything as a result.

It’s a fancy way of offering an opinion that has pretty much already been made clear by the hordes of unwashed, downtrodden folks in the halls of learning.

But what the heck is going on that’s got everyone’s beans on the grill?

Wisconsin Madness Summary! (Look for the Trend)

Wait . . . what? Does this strike anyone else as profoundly weird? (Remember: this post is about “confidence.”)

So let me get this straight: after completely ignoring faculty concerns at nearly every turn, after abandoning faculty to incessant attacks from all comers, after remaining silent on fake “studies surveys” on tenure, after painting your faculty as “emotional” for reacting to the loss of earned job protections, after taking over every branch of government possible and stacking the Board of Regents with corporate hatchets . . . suddenly UW Central and the legislature are upset about a no-confidence motion that they could completely ignore as they have done everything else? What? Why?

The thing is, the deeper you dig, the more confusing things get, as in people don’t know what they’re talking about. Do you want examples?

OK, the first response is Chancellor Rebecca Blank. She doesn’t issue press releases; she takes her word directly to the streets via her blog. Among her claims: “Such a vote would put the UW-Madison faculty in opposition to our governing board, with which we work closely and must have a positive relationship.” Basically, doing this will lead to a political backlash that will result in more budget cuts. (This is the “faculty are always to blame” trump card, which is synonymous with “shut up.”)

But none of this makes sense—there is no “relationship” with the Board of Regents because there is no dialogue, no reciprocity, and really no interest beyond achieving the predetermined ends of the austerity agenda. What “relationship” do you have with officials who offer “welcome to the twenty-first century” as a justification for demeaning people’s entire professional record and accomplishment?

Furthermore, and I’ll say it again, this has nothing to do with faculty. Do you know what budgets are slightly connected to? (Ding!) Revenue. You know what Wisconsin is not interested in? (Ding!) Collecting revenue. Therefore, budget cuts. We could literally change the name of the UW System to the “Ayn Rand Academy of William Buckley’s Wet Dreams on AM Radio” and we’d still see a budget cut. Lastly, are we dealing with adults anymore? Does the fate of our state’s treasured university system—an essential economic, educational, and public resource—hinge on someone’s tone on any given Tuesday? Really? None of this makes sense.

The second to respond was Assemblyman Jim Steineke. He reacted on Twitter, then issued his press release, which itself is hard to interpret. I’d expect someone to respond, but why him? Among his claims: that irregular UW-Madison faculty think they are better than regular folks and that the motion displays “a complete disconnect between UW-Madison faculty who seem to expect their job to come with a forever guarantee and the average Wisconsin family struggling just to make ends meet.” OK, I’m confused. Why is a GOP legislator pointing out that the average Wisconsin family is struggling financially when we’ve lived under ruling-party economic policy, for a long time running, that was supposed to fix all that? A knee-jerk response might be “it’s Obama’s fault.” But the Wisconsin economy has been underperforming when compared to national averages. Also of note: this press release doesn’t seem to criticize UW-Madison as much as it works to make the following claim—the more people we have just making ends meet, the better; if you are above that state of existence, we need to bring you back down to struggling. I honestly have no idea what any of this has to do with, well, anything. None of this makes sense.

Then there’s Senator Steve Nass, who has already gotten everything he wants and then some, expressing outrage (as he did when Ray Cross agreed to meet with students of color): “The radical faculty at UW-Madison are rejecting the values and expectations of the people of Wisconsin. They are backhanding the middle-class families who are pleading for controls on tuition and an end to wasteful spending in the UW System. Passage of the resolution will prove that even more institutional reforms are urgently needed and must be included in the next state budget to protect tuition-paying students.” What? This is the person who has voted for massive cuts to the system, repeatedly. Tuition control? Legislators do nothing but brag about their long-standing tuition freeze. The best way to lower tuition? Fund tuition decreases. Backhanding the middle class? This person votes against labor protections and helped pass “right to work earn less” legislation. Do I really need to say that faculty have nothing to do with tuition policy or budgets? Do I need to point out that faculty don’t have power over their own workplace, let alone the ability to backhand the entire middle class with invisible powers? Furthermore, professors pay taxes and are largely middle- to lower-middle class earners. None of this makes any sense.

OK, now Darling and Nygren, who add this whopping untruth: “Aside from these two changes, the Regents’ tenure policy is virtually identical to what Wisconsin’s tenure policy had been prior to Act 55.” Guys. Come on. Do I really have to say this: our state legislature does not make “changes” to law that accomplish nothing. Don’t you remember, the whole point is “Big and Bold.” So what we’re to believe here is that the completely Republican-controlled state government passed laws, RELATED TO THE DREADED PROFESSORS, that did . . . nothing? Ha!

None of this makes any sense. Of all things, and of all times, why now? Why the heavy rhetorical artillery in relation to a small thing, this potential vote of no confidence, that is completely nonbinding? Why these specific people, issuing releases and official documents (or blogs)? Does anyone have an idea what generated this full-court press, and is Central reaching out to these folks to do so? (A respected dirty hippy colleague of mine has convinced me that this is likely.)

But why? Our local press applies almost no heat at all to President Cross. These legislative statements praise him after, well, decimating the budget and eroding labor protections. What’s the problem?

One answer, of course, is the usual: scapegoat faculty just as the public are starting to wake up to the effects of the budget cuts. It’s too bad people actually have to lose something to snap out of it, but people are starting to notice, and with the Trump candidacy looming, maybe folks are getting a bit nervous about their seats and need a quick reset to divide-and-conquer mode—that feels like what’s going on, as seen in the usual “make ends meet working class elite arrogant liberty” rhetoric at work. But maybe there’s something else. If there is, I hope someone writes about it.

In terms of the potential vote itself, it doesn’t really matter much to me. Why? The phrase “no confidence” just feels redundant at this point.

TL; DR

For the past few years I’ve used this space to be a reporter of sorts. I have reported on events, while also indulging my Carveresque appetite for exploring how we talk about things. The results have been mixed in that each revelation immediately shoulders the great ecclesiastical weight of “there is nothing new under the sun”: only people with money matter; power sides with power; top-down authority nurtures incompetence; the platitudes of leadership apply to everyone but leadership; faculty are always the bottom rung; [insert your own maxim that is both contemporary and timeless]. What else is there to say? A lot, I hope. Let me strip this post of humor and video and memes and just talk about what’s missing in Wisconsin: truth, honesty.

Let me offer this openly—there are a lot of people lying about the current state of the UW System. Many have had their lying documented in print, the kind of documentation where you can put two quotes from the same speaker side by side and see that they are opposites. No one seems to care about lying all that much anymore—our culture more than tolerates it—thus reinforcing the two irrefutable truths this blog relies on: faculty are always to blame and you won’t believe what’s happened since the last thing that happened. But if “basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth,” then I suggest we start telling the truth as a means for discovering it.

In a little detour, yesterday I was reading the text of a Rebecca Solnit speech to journalism students that focused on how to find the real stories hiding within dominant, mainstream, or moneyed-interest narratives. The piece is called “To Break the Story You Must Break the Status Quo,”[9] and I was particularly struck by this passage as it might apply to the UW System:

I think of the mainstream media as having not so much a rightwing or leftwing bias but a status-quo bias, a tendency to believe people in authority, to trust institutions and corporations and the rich and powerful . . . to let people who have been proven to tell lies tell more lies that get reported without questioning, to move forward on cultural assumptions that are readily disproved, and to devalue nearly all outsiders, whether they’re discredited or mocked or just ignored.

I challenge anyone to deny that this accurately describes the rhetorical reality of the UW narrative right now. What is the most glaring proof of all? The tooth-and-nail resistance to the narrative shift caused by the no-confidence votes[10] at campuses across the system. Faculty and staff in the UW, having been thoroughly abandoned by central leadership, are entirely on their own. Although the vast majority of those in power in Wisconsin have ignored faculty at every step of the process, something about these votes has struck a nerve, and a highly coordinated response against these completely nonbinding resolutions is the result: the system president, regents, various chancellors, newspaper editors, legislators, “think” tanks, punditry, boards of trustees, and even some students make up a mere portion of the “be quiet” chorus, and the term status quo is often invoked, as if speaking against traditional top-down authority and against investing wealth with even more power somehow represents a desire to preserve rather than change.

Another characteristic of the intense backlash against faculty/staff for their recent votes is the usual parade of language that includes words/phrases like common sense, modest, in line with our peers. So here’s my question: if this is all so “common sense” and “modest,” then why do you have to lie so much about process and intentions? Why are people who drone on about “accountability” for others allowed to act without any accountability to the institutions they are supposed to represent? The obvious answer is that none of this is modest or relies on common sense, but let’s document some things first. (I’m aware that people using the word “lie” or “lying” is seen as uncivil and oh so beyond the pale. But I’m more literal about it: you’re either lying, or you’re not.)

So, yesterday the Governor’s Office finally released documents related to their attempt to change the language of the Wisconsin Idea. At the time, the governor attributed this all to a mistake and a “drafting error,” and the current documents confirm that this was a lie. Even when the claim was first made, Politifact Wisconsin labeled it “Pants on Fire.” Let us not forget that the two words that precede “pants on fire”[11] in the traditional children’s expression are “liar, liar.” Instead, the documents reveal that the process was being “driven by the Governor’s office” and that “the Gov requested a simplified and clearer mission and purpose statements.”[12] If all of this is so minor, why lie about it?

Also aligning against faculty is system president Ray Cross. And though people are outraged that faculty might voice displeasure in the system president, none of the stories about the no-confidence votes asks if anyone, anywhere, should have confidence in someone who has lied to them and had that lie documented. What am I talking about? As I wrote before, President Cross’s go-to rhetorical device was that the tenure statutes had “simply moved”[13] and that there were no substantive changes. But what did yet another Freedom of Information Act request reveal in an e-mail? That they hadn’t “simply moved.” In fact, he wrote, “This program discontinuance debate has exposed the real value of removing tenure-related policies from statutory language.” The public statement was blatantly dishonest, while the more private e-mail illustrates what everyone knew to be the truth. So again, if what you’re doing is so right and common sense based, why lie about it? In what ways are you accountable and “transparent” in this?

The Board of Regents is clearly aligned against faculty (that was the sole purpose for many of their appointments), and they have the power to enact changes without apology. In fact, they can state what they want to do, why, and then do it. Yet they still lie about it. For example, the Board of Regents went through the usual dishonest circus that surrounds predetermined outcomes: we have many people participating, we’re listening, and so on. They made a big show of being “open to suggestions”[14] on wording changes to policy. This of course was another lie, as documented by the Capital Times,[15] with the key contradiction being “staying on message and tamping down opposition on the tenure issue were priorities for top UW system officials. . . . Regent Tim Higgins messaged Behling and regent president Regina Millner that day about putting off the entreaties of the UW-Whitewater leader of a system-wide effort to amend tenure policy proposals before the vote. ‘I believe that it’s important that all Regents support the task force recommendations as presented,’ Higgins wrote.” Again, if this is all so common sense and modest, why lie about it all? Why is it more important to hold faculty accountable for telling the truth?

And the lies go on and on: deliberate misrepresentations of faculty-to-student ratios,[16] deliberate misrepresentations of the decline in state support[17] for higher education, lies about “jobs for life,” out toward infinity. It never stops. Still, even though faculty/staff have consistently told the truth throughout this entire process, almost no one sides with us, ever. Why? I’m tempted to refer to the preceding Solnit quote and talk about our deep fetishizing of power and “the boss,” but I don’t want to sound academic (that’s something one has to apologize for).

But let me suggest to anyone out there, regardless of political stripes, at least to ask herself why people who claim recent changes are “no big deal” continually have to lie about them, all while clambering for accountability. If I’m going to go to the store to buy carrots and milk, I say I’m going to the store to buy carrots and milk. It’s no big deal. It’s common sense (I need those things), and it’s modest ($4.00). I don’t scapegoat one of my kids for needing to go (“She always spills all the milk!”).

Of course, the lying does serve a purpose—it distracts from other stories that might shift the narrative to unpleasant places and upset the status quo. For example:

• • Not one media story I can find, not one, addresses that UW faculty who already have tenure have been stripped of an earned property right. Put another way, if there’s anything I can think of that is antithetical to true conservative governance, it’s taking away people’s earned property/compensation. You might not like professors, but I think something people dislike even more is government taking away property/compensation that people have already earned. That is exactly what is happening in Wisconsin now. This is a story. It has yet to be told. It will take a shift in narrative and a brave media for that to happen, thus the hard push to paint middle-class, hardworking faculty as “out of touch.”
• • Not one story I can find, anywhere, addresses dishonesty as a commonsense reason for a no-confidence resolution. The dishonesty has been documented. So I’ll ask anyone out there, regardless of his job: would you have confidence in a boss or authority who lied to you? This is really a simple yes-or-no question.
• • Instead of fetishizing how many people get fired, or even wanting people fired, will a media outlet shift discussion toward the lengthy, beyond thorough hiring process the system must go through for each faculty hire? There’s a reason a lot of people don’t get fired—the hiring process is one of the most thorough and time consuming in the world, and we should be praised for that (even if it can be cumbersome). That’s a story waiting to be told.
• • Traditional media outlets are unwilling to take on Governor Walker’s deliberately dishonest claim that the UW System’s budget is bigger than ever, even when he doesn’t account for inflation. Instead, we have to rely on resourceful, thorough bloggers like Jake[18] (the best blog going) and actual data provided by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,[19] which verified, “In fact, if you exclude the shifted funding responsibility for the technical college system—which appears as additional state support—state funding for Wisconsin’s public two- and four-year institutions has fallen by roughly 25 percent per student since 2008. This includes large-scale higher education cuts from Wisconsin lawmakers in 2015, including a $250 million cut[20] to the University of Wisconsin System that caused harmful ripple effects[21] on many of the system’s campuses.” This is a story that needs to be told. It’s waiting. It’s not a “point of view.” It’s a story that won’t permit Governor Walker to take credit for federal aid (which he usually abhors) and student-paid tuition as part of a “budget.”
• • When will we move past the lie that the majority of UW professors are overpaid (they are not[22]) and that by unequivocally siding with President Cross and the regents, you are siding against spoiled, overprotected faculty. This is a lie. In fact, the pattern is quite the opposite: in standing against UW faculty/staff, people always side with people who make more money and have more job security. I will use myself as an example: my starting salary in the UW System, with a PhD, was $40,000. At nearly 15 years in, I am just now hitting $50,000 with a family of four. To go over 50K, I must take overload assignments, secure stipends for research-related work, and so on. Several my graduating students earn starting salaries that exceed my current pay (which I’m very happy for). News flash: President Cross’s starting salary was $525,000; he was also awarded tenure, although he has never taught a course in the UW or gone through the tenure process in a UW department (when I switched campuses, I had to give up tenure and start over). Put another way, by standing against faculty, you side with people who make far more money than faculty and have far more job security. Think about that. The man makes almost half a million dollars more per year than me . . . and I’m “out of touch” with the “real world”? This applies almost uniformly to Board of Regents members; does Regent Grebe make less than the average faculty member at one of the comprehensives? I’ll just wager . . . no. This is a story that’s not being told: almost everyone siding against faculty and these resolutions have pay and benefits that far exceed those of the targeted population. That is the definition of today’s status quo. Accountability only moves downhill.
• • When will the media help shift the narrative away from the lie that faculty, regardless of their feelings about the issue, have nothing at all to do with tuition? Tuition is not set by faculty, who have power over almost nothing. Yet Governor Walker and various representatives are allowed to misinform the public that current attacks on faculty, and the system, have something to do with their connection to higher tuition, which couldn’t be further from the truth. There is a story here that needs to be told. That story is that we can lower tuition by increasing state support for the UW, or #fundthefreeze. That narrative shift would expose the lie that freezing tuition while simultaneously cutting the UW budget serves any purpose beyond starving the institution until it crumbles. Don’t believe me? Well, the governor, who continually harps about the tuition freeze, was very much in favor of tuition increases under the public authority model; just look at his old press releases[23] (thanks Nick Fleisher): “Keeping Governor Walker’s promise, the resident undergraduate tuition freeze will continue for two more years making it four straight years tuition has been frozen. After that, the UW System Authority institutions will have flexibility to adjust tuition based on demand, making them more competitive and market-based.” Sounds like a different tune to me, but I’m sure immature faculty are to blame somehow.

I could provide bullet points forever. Story: remember the legislature’s outrage about the UW “cash reserves”? Those reserves have nothing to do with faculty, at all. If this was such a problem, then why has the legislature responded by moving to increase the power of the very administrative positions they blamed for the reserves? Story: faculty don’t write or pass budgets or collect state revenue, yet why are they the central focus of cost “reform”? Story: For all the talk of “openness” and “modest” and “common sense,” it wasn’t modest enough to warrant public discussion. Always forgotten is the fact that these changes came via a budget bill, deliberately inserted into the process in a way to limit or eliminate discussion. Story: I literally have a list of fifty other items to add here.

These posts write themselves now, which is why I must move on. For some final thoughts, a few truths are worth stating clearly; these are truths that I have searched for and found. First, the no-confidence resolutions, regardless of your position on them, have shifted points of discussion into the public in a more visible fashion. This is good. Our system president believes he has the right to conduct the business of a public university in private, and these resolutions have, by the sheer volume of discussion, helped shift the narrative. There’s a long way to go. Second, faculty and staff have, throughout this process, been the truth tellers, and they’ve had to largely go it alone. I’m learning that that’s what it takes to get a story told.

In the end, the reason this is all being made to be about faculty is to provide cover for this reality: no one wants to pay for anything anymore, ever, while still wanting the benefits provided; people who scream “taxpayer!” the loudest would rather not pay taxes (I want to pay taxes; it’s one of the great acts of community). What’s in store for the UW has nothing to do with resolutions, or blogs, or who said what on Tuesday. It has to do with revenue. As we all know, other people are responsible for that, many of them currently pointing their fingers at faculty members who might make 60K with a PhD for working eighty hours a week. But none of that generates revenue; policy does that. Corey Robin, in writing about similar neglect and scapegoating in the City University of New York system,[24] wrote, “Excellence doesn’t come cheap. Just ask Harvard.” Now that’s some truth.

Thankfully, I’m done now. Beyond my subzero morale and a decade plus of people telling me I’m worthless while working my butt off and paying taxes, I’ll be moving on to committee/governance work that precludes my writing much. That being said, I’m willing to turn this space over to others and a series of guest posts. Upside: you’ll have nine readers, including my mom. (Hi, Mom! Love you. I’ll be making sauce soon.)