Do or die time for pensions

The legislature may be about the ram a pension bill through.  Here's a link to the latest statement by the IEA president, Cindy Klickna. And here's a link to a handy form that will allow you to send off a quick email to the governor and your legislators. The IEA provides a form letter, but you can edit or delete it and write your own.

This development is so depressing that I've tried to ignore it. But if all us take a few minutes to send off a quick email, that may make a bit of a difference. I use the union links because they are handy, and the unions ought to have some power with our Democratic state government, but this is, I suspect, an issue that unifies the vast majority of faculty, union or no. As I've blogged before, our pensions are already far less than those at peer institutions. These reforms threaten to reduce them to Walmart levels--no better than Social Security (and in fact cheaper for the state, which doesn't even match the payments it would need to make were we in the Social Security system).

Graduation

A quick review of the new SIUC graduation: I think the new ceremony is an improvement. 

I attended the ceremony for the colleges of Liberal Arts and Mass Communication and Media Arts.  The new ceremony was more of a show (as in the confetti below), but on the whole this was a good thing, I think. Past Liberal Arts graduations, at any rate, were almost entirely formulaic; some years the distinguished alum would give a speech (of varied quality), and a representative of the alumni association would make a quick pitch for that organization, but other than that it was mainly "by the power vested in me" language, followed by the long if joyous parade of grads across the stage. Most years no one made any effort to say anything inspirational. Surely graduates should get someone making an effort to send them off with some words of wisdom. Now they do.

"Ed Games"

"Ed Games", presumably a reference to the hit young adult book and movie Hunger Games, is the title of a series of articles the Southern Illinoisan is publishing on the power struggle between SIU President Poshard and trustees Lowery and Herrin. The first round of articles was published Sunday; another article appeared today.

I think the technical term for what we've got ourselves here is a pissing contest. The articles themselves strike me as fairly balanced, though as Poshard has more voices on his side (inasmuch as he still has more votes on the BOT), his charge of "micromanaging" gains a certain credence. But it is at least curious that Poshard sees unprofessional and unethical meddling whenever anyone challenges his authority--members of the BOT asking too many questions about SIU, the governor's office meddling by lobbying members of the BOT. While Herrin's insistence on asking questions seems eminently responsible and appropriate, his positive vision for SIU appears to devolve to that lowest common denominator of current political thought: "it ought to be run like a business".

The Goose Test

To take the goose test, identify the figure to your right. To check your answer, click on the picture--or just keep reading.

I don't know what people tell the few new arrivals we have these days, but back in my day (I arrived in 1998), whenever anyone literate heard that you were heading to SIU, they would tell you to read Richard Russo's 1996 academic farce, Straight Man. Russo wrote the book while at SIU, and while he cunningly camouflages the setting by placing his second tier state university in the dying coal country of central Pennsylvania, there are those who believe that the book, which happens to contain elements like Faner Hall and a campus lake, may have something to do with our own beloved institution. The goose from the cover illustration alludes to the goose the protagonist, the chair of the English department, holds as he stands before the campus lake, threatening to kill one duck (sic) per day until he receives a budget from the central administration. Okay, so he was a bit drunk when he found himself in front of some TV cameras. Perhaps I should have tried that.

One of the premises of Russo's book is that anyone who spends more than two or three years at Central Pennsylvania State (or whatever he calls it) is, well, a failure. While the book is funny and smart, I thought this premise of Russo's book was false, or at least farcical. Glad to have landed a decent job in the humanities at all, finding myself among smart, well-qualified colleagues, and feeling the value of SIUC's particular mission--bringing a quality research-university education to an inclusive student body--I thought anyone who shared Russo's attitude* was a snob, or self-loathing, or at least a novelist. Here was important work to do, an important mission, many decent students, mostly strong colleagues; not an elite school, by any means, and a big state institution, with all the bureaucratic and political nonsense that entails; not the best location in the world; but a place one could make an honorable and successful career.

You'll have anticipated the next line: I'm not so sure anymore. Believe it or not, I'll try to say why without dwelling on who is responsible for the malaise around here. And I'll try to suggest what I think is a rather obvious and relatively easy step that could be taken to help lessen that malaise.

Quinn's Pension Plan

It is, I am afraid, a typical Friday afternoon story: bad news.   A "choice" between losing state support for retiree healthcare and a 3% pay cut in the form of increased contributions to pensions. The choice is a ruse to avoid constitutional scrutiny. Plus, universities (and school districts) would be asked to pick up more of the tab--though the details there are unclear. The unions are naturally opposed to the plan.

Here are some early news stories: Fox ; Chicago Tribune.

I've cut off comments on this post, as I'm sick of having to read them to see if anyone has managed to be not only illiterate, mean-spirited, uninformed, baseless, and witless, but acutely offensive enough to be censored. Not to worry: I'll post something fairly soon that will provide a field day for the anonymouses. In the meantime, well, consider starting your own blog . . .  Cheers, Dave.