Defeat bill 1673

Here it is, the bill we've all been waiting for, SB 1673, which will slash employee pensions and health care.

Call 1-888-412-6570 to be directed to your local representative by the We Are One Illinois labor coalition. (They will keep tabs of how many call via their service as a way of noting union strength on this issue.) If you'd rather call directly, here are the numbers for reps in the Carbondale area:

Rep. Mike Bost: 618 457 5787 / 217 782 0387

Senator David Leuchtefeld: 618 243 9014 / 217 782 8137.

While both are Republicans, and Democrats run the legislature (which runs the state), Democrats need Republican support to pass this legislation, and the Republicans may in fact be our greatest allies on this issue, as they are particularly opposed to the move to pass pension costs down to local school districts and universities.

The ieanea.org website has updates on pending legislation.  Capital Fax gathers media on the breaking story. After the break, an email the AAUP is sending out to Illinoisans on their mailing list.

[Extra: Faner construction]

[Schadenfreude update. On May 31 a gas line was ruptured outside Faner--sending employees home from surrounding buildings.  Earlier a water line had been ruptured, cutting of the AC in the building (but that luckily happened before the recent heat wave). Who's operating that there steam-shovel, anyway? And I wonder if the contractor's insurance will pay back the university for having to give hundreds of employees paid time off work.]

OK, I promised only retrospective posts but this one is close to home. The Southern has a story today on the renovated "pedestrian mall" outside Faner, where I work.

Two points: the non-aesthetic reasons for this renovation given in the story are bogus. And this is a helluva lot of money: $1.25 million.

Closing thoughts on the strike

Some closing thoughts on the conflict between the FA and the administration that culminated in last fall's strike.

I suppose the lead can be that less has changed, at least in relations between the FA and administration, than many of us expected. Many expected Armageddon. It didn't happen. Neither the FA nor the Poshard/Cheng administration has ceased to exist. Neither side won a clear victory, but neither has peace and goodwill broken out. Now back to business as usual isn't the worst of all possible results. The Cheng administration has not engaged in any significant retribution that I'm aware of (my relatively smooth approval to serve as chair is one sign of that for those who don't regard me as a traitor to the True Cause). Nor, so far as I am aware, has there been much in the way of action by FA stalwarts to punish their colleagues who didn't strike.

Of course that fact that nothing much has changed doesn't mean that a stalemate was inevitable, or that there aren't longer-term consequences of the strike and the conflict leading up to it that have yet to become evident. I still tend to believe that the FA faced a true existential threat during the strike, and suspect that putting an end to the FA was at least one result devoutly to be wished as far as some on the administrative side were concerned. It's also possible that had more faculty joined the FA strike, more effectively shutting down campus, Cheng could have been sacked. The fact that one emerges from a contest with the parties more or less where they started doesn't mean that the stakes weren't high in the first place, only that the contest came out more or less even.

Thoughts on possible longer term results after the break.

Moving on

As most readers of this blog will know by now, I have been elected to serve as department chair by my colleagues in Foreign Languages and Literatures. It's this, mainly, that has led me to decide it's about time for me to stop blogging. Here I'll try to explain that utterly momentous decision--and also another decision I made, to stay on the Faculty Senate. A third change to my status didn't require any decision: I will no longer eligible for "active membership" in the Faculty Association, as chairs have been classified as AP ("administrative professional") staff who are no longer members of the FA bargaining unit.

I'm not explaining myself because many will care about why Dave is doing what he's doing (though some anonymous comments of late have reflected an unhealthy interest in my nefarious motives, and should have fun commenting on this). Rather, the issues I'm dealing with here may be of more general interest than the trivial question of how I'm going to spend my time. So there's room for discussion here that goes beyond the charge that Dave is selling out, never had anything worth selling, etc. In a few additional posts I'll try to pull together some things I've learned from blogging and the rest since Namdar and I started this blog back in March of 2011. Then it will be lights out--though I suppose I'll leave the blog floating forevermore on blogger, comments turned off, adding to the electronic detritus of the internet age.  

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.