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March 5, 2010
Everyone gets it
I mean, they might protest the core business model, in which so many employees are effectively unfireable, meaning that everyone else has to take a disproportionate share of the cuts. But other than that, what is all this protesting going to accomplish? Telling the administration they're unhappy? Trust me, the administration is pretty unhappy too.
That's Megan McArdle on the California student protests. What we've heard ad infinitum this year on the Budget Advisory Task Force salary and benefits are 70% of the budget. Put the relative unfireability of people like me and 70% and there are eventually going to be some ugly decisions. The faculty got called "good Germans" in a listserve email after the monthly Fac Meeting on Monday - you know, "they came for the communists and I didn't stand up...." It seems an inappropriate analogy to me, who has been standing up (and sitting down at conference tables all year) discussing what can be done. I think there are worse alternatives than the ones we have chosen and are exploring. We've polled the place - faculty and staff - to try to find the least of the evils. But still - people will be hurt. No way around it.
This is a hard time to be an administrator. But calling them Nazis doesn't help - this does not rise to the level of expelling the Jews from the Universities.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at March 5, 2010 8:34 AM