Also an editorial suggesting that Bloggie change her name: See here.
Thank you IC.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
DON'T BE A SHEEP
UT's Officially Disapproved Information Source and HISTORICAL ARCHIVE. The only source of truth, where Paradox Manifests: Hundreds of thousands of visits. Yet No One Admits to Reading It. Welcome to the "Grey Area" where "Unethical Utterances," i.e., criticisms of administrators, are commonplace. Make U.U. here where genuine civility still reigns, a.k.a., freedom......................... UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO'S EQUIVALENT TO RADIO FREE EUROPE
Search This Blog
NEW!!! Hard Eight by Professor Extreme
HARD EIGHT
Hard Eight: Auto-Ethnographic Essays on Academic Culture Featuring the End of the Arts & Sciences College, University of Toledo, 2010
Daily Koan
Should the newly discovered black hole be named in honor of UT BOT?
Swamp Bubble
Do you agree or disagree that University of Toledo suffers from administrative bloat?
How do you feel about the proposed UT Degree Guarantee program? (Reposted to allow more people to vote.)
How do you feel about the proposed UT Guarantee program?
How would you grade the overall performance of the Jacobs' administration on running the University of Toledo?
COMMENT OF THE WEEK
Bloggie applauds this perspicacious observer:
"The administration is in a panic mode to implement controversial and irreversible structural and curricular changes campus-wide by early February fiscal plan deadlines with only the vaguest notions of their impacts. The plan is, according to an interview with a top administrator published in the most recent Independent Collegian, to cast out many seeds and "see what grows." This experimental garden, as most senators articulated in many different ways, seems a costly recipe for disaster. Utter madness. Stay tuned."
Print Version of Dictionary of Academia Available on Amazon.com
The profound ruminations of the goaty Sage are now available in this 119 page satirical masterpiece. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1480292494/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B009RC0SJA&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1JV8N5BYAYY9WC9SJWD2
"Dictionary of Academia" Read it While it's Hot
A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
Comment of the Week
"This is that old tension between the corporate way of doing things and the academic way of doing things. In the corporate world, you sweep everything under the rug to make your b.s. as shiny, pleasing to the nose, and profitable as possible. In the academic world, you operate with a higher moral standard. Veritas and all that."
Comment of the Week of August 13
Re UT academic posers and hypocrites:
Have their checks calculated in units of postmodern theoretical currency and issued in photocopied legal tender notes signed by Walter Benjamin with a photo of Karl Marx and a seal stamped “In Derrida We Trust”.
Comment of the Era
Wow! Ain't that something.
-Anonymous
Comment of the Week
Mention goes to the the anonymous commentator of Feb 7, who, regarding UT President Llloyd Jacob's "Investing in Faculty" letter, stated: "If we could use the same criteria for 'investing in administrators' we could cut most of those positions."
Comments to HLC
Make sure you address your comments to HLC to the email address listed below in the "Higher Learning Commission Wants to Know" post. This may be the only chance you have to be heard. Bloggie hears that UT administration has discussed giving faculty "training" so that faculty members know how to "properly" talk to the HLC folks. How's that for stacking the deck? Does everyone get a little script to read? Make sure you practice before a mirror at being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Comment of the Week!
Definitely, the Comment of the Week award goes to Anonymous 12:14 pm, Dec 3, under the "Higher Learning Commission Needs to Know" posting by Diogenes. Pithy and pointed!
--Love,
Bloggie
MESSAGE OF THE DAY:
DON'T BE A SHEEP
Independent Collegian Article on Dicey Administrative Spending
IC reporter Casey Cheap looks at bow ties, apartments and movie tickets purchased by UT administrators at university/public expense. See
TO CONTACT BLOGGIE . . .
Bloggie is always glad to consider submissions to this blog. If you have something that you wish posted please send it to:
ascbloggie@gmail.com
Letter and Petition from Foreign Languages Faculty Member
A couple weeks ago, at the beginning of summer break, we in the Department of Foreign Languages were informed that our secretary's position was being eliminated and that while she will not lose her job (she'll be transferred), that position is not to be filled. We apparently will be expected to do our own jobs plus what we can of the secretary's. That is clearly not acceptable, and so one of the steps we in FL are taking against it is an online petition now available for any who want to (including those who for whatever reason--not a registered Ohio voter, not a US citizen, etc.--cannot sign the petition against SB5), to read and sign.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Katherine Best
Wave of the Future or Merely Sometime Later This Week?
The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a deeply fascinating article called, "When to Dissolve a Faculty Senate." Apparently this is any time that it becomes "adversarial" to administration.
The online comments to the article are priceless.
Nemeth on Mammon in IC
David Nemeth's most recent tour-de-force
Professor Nemeth has another fabulous and timely article in the new and increasingly wonderful Independent Collegian. See http://www.independentcollegian.com/forum/the-kraken-attacks-1.2340091
Nemeth Does it Again
See the forum article in The Independent Collegian at:
Nemeth's New Article in Collegian
The Independent Collegian has run another of Professor Nemeth's fine and provocative articles in its latest edition. This one discusses the double-talk by mouthpieces for the current UT administration concerning the effects of and reasons behind so-called strategic reorganization. Make sure you get the latest version of Newspeak 5.1 if you want to decode what UT administrators are really saying.
UT Ranks 13th Nationally on Administrative Bloat
See Appendix B of the Administrative Bloat report posted on 8/28 for evidence, but UT now has a higher proportion of administrators to students than all but 12 public universities in America. President Jacobs has finally put University of Toledo in the top tier. With Strategic Organization he may be aiming for number one.
This Blog is a free and independent information source. Contributions and comments are welcome. Contact: ASCBloggie@gmail.com WARNING AND DISCLAIMER !!!! This blog is entirely non-official!! People may express opinion here, exercising freedom of speech and association.
Recent Letters from The Blade
Jacobs' arrogance is astonishing
Recently, President Lloyd Jacobs of the University of Toledo stated that bonuses were justified because his administrators "took all the risks."
As a professor at UT, I am outraged that President Jacobs claims that administrators take all of the risks. What risks do they take that the other faculty and staffs on campus do not?
Administrators are protected by state and federal employment laws and by their contracts.
When ex-President Vik Kapoor was terminated, he remained a professor with a salary near what he was paid as president.
As president emeritus, Dan Johnson retained a salary greater than his pay as president.
In the recent layoffs, exceptionally few administrators were terminated. It seems to me that low-level personnel at UT have far more risks because the greater proportion of the layoffs have come from their ranks. And they did not have continuing salaries.
President Jacobs' answer to questions on two occasions regarding relinquishing part of his bonus was to the effect that he earned his bonuses and what he did with them was his business.
Administrators do not risk their personal money in their duties: they use taxpayer money and funds collected through donations and grants to the university.
Administrators take home salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and then add bonuses for longevity and whatever else the president decides is fitting for their contracts.
However, the lower-level personnel have much lower salaries and no such bonuses. Where is the risk?
It seems to me that these bonuses are convoluted: The lower-level personnel are taking the greater risks with no bonuses while the administrators with very rewarding jobs with little risk receive large bonuses.
Am I missing something here?
WALTER W. OLSON,
Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing
Engineering,
University of Toledo
It's the same old, same old at UT
I could hardly believe the arrogance of Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, president of the University of Toledo, when a reporter asked if he would be willing to forgo his bonus in light of the layoffs, raise in tuition, etc.
His comment was that he worked for it. Is that to say that the ones being laid off did not work for their pay?
All I can say is, business as usual at UT. Some things never change.
SANDY FLICK
Rose Acres Drive
UT also has checks, balances
In response to letter titled "Professors must focus on teaching," I would like to point out that the University of Toledo operates on the basis of shared governance.
This means that faculty members participate in the administration of the university.
A focus on teaching requires faculty to address administrative issues such as policies, procedures, and yes, finances, because these all affect classroom outcomes. A university with solid and equitable finances benefits everyone, including and especially the students. Just as the U.S. government is constituted to have checks and balances, so is our university government.
The UT-AAUP is one of those checks against UT administrators who most recently have displayed more concern for their own profit rather than a concern for the common good.
LINDA M. ROUILLARD,
Associate Professor
of French,
University of Toledo
Quote of the Year (so far)
The following is excerpted from the recent UT AAUP newsletter concerning the official university response to news of the bonus scandal:
. . . . Either Jacobs is misleading the media or he has misled the Board of Trustees. President Jacobs objected to "the general tone" of the UT-AAUP Newsletter. Many persons on this campus object to the "general tone" of the Jacobs Administration. During his tenure as President, he has introduced an administrative culture of fear and intimidation. . . . A point of logic must be raised here, with all respect to UT AAUP, the conclusions that President Jacobs has (1) misled the media and (2) the Board of Trustees are not mutually exclusive. Both would seem likely given his considerable talent at spinning "visions." |
How to Contribute
The Blog is now under new management, a consortium of ASC faculty who pooled their longevity bonuses to purchase it from its original owners. Your comments are still welcome but look for some changes. Contact: ASCBloggie@gmail.com. Your contributions might include new posts, images, comments to existing articles/posts, concerns about process and substance at UT's College of Arts & Sciences. This blog is entirely non-official, for which you can be thankful, unless you enjoy reading self-serving bureaucratic propaganda, and is intended as a discussion and commentary forum for UT A&S faculty and community.
Another Claim and Disclaimer
A blog is a blog is a blog. Information, comments and opinions found here don't represent official views, instead they represent truthful and sincere ones. If you want the official line on things go elsewhere. This is a discussion and comment page. You may even read things here that you disagree with, and then, maybe not.
ASCBloggie
Google News for "University of Toledo"
Google News for "Higher Education Ohio"
Blog Archive
-
▼
2010
(179)
-
▼
January
(22)
- Nuggets of Truth
- Furloughs
- Council Meeting
- Installment Two of Letter to ASC Faculty on Roundt...
- Letter on Roundtable to ASC Faculty from Professor...
- Furloughs
- Round Table Two Step
- House Unamerican Activities Committee
- Quote
- The Final Report
- The Petition
- Questions for the Dean
- Petition/Open Letter Protecting Your Mind from the...
- Kill the Messenger!
- Butting Up Against the Truth
- Go Independent Collegian!
- Unmasked
- Roundtable Principals Disposing of Arts & Sciences...
- The big-time official WOW Report
- "It ain't broken!"
- The Meaning of "WOW"
- "Are They Students? Or, 'Customers'?"
-
▼
January
(22)
Links
7 comments:
What I gathered from Tuesday’s A&S Council meeting is that there is a popular and highly controversial “Arts and Sciences College Forum” blog out there in cyberspace that has content described as “embarrassing,” “outrageous,” “vulgar,” "irreverent" and so on by some A&S Council members . They claim that in spite of those several disclaimers prominently displayed on its home page this “rogue” blog misrepresents to the Inter-net-worked world the identity and reality of the “Official Arts and Sciences Council of the University of Toledo.”
Owners and operators of the controversial blog (nicknamed “Bloggie”) claim that events occurring during its history and recorded and exemplified in its contents demonstrate that Bloggie successfully has served the public as an effective virtual “free speech board” in the spirit of the First Amendment, advantaging new communications technologies to speak what it perceives as “Truth” against “Power.”
It seems to me that this CAS debate about what to do with Bloggie does not boil down to a simplistic binary of “keep it” or “terminate it” (as the Independent Collegiate report implies). There are many other possibilities. For example, why doesn’t the official A&S Council construct its own website and thus ignore Bloggie and/or beat it at its own game? I suggest that these bitter enemies of “Bloggie” channel their destructive energies into creating an official UT A&S Council blog. Fin.
I am not surprised that the administrator "want to be"'s would want to close this blog. The best way to control a population is to limit the information that is passed. This blog site has been the voice of accurate news. So it has to be stopped in the minds of those who wish total control and agreement.
People who think that UT administrators would start doing the right thing, if only anonymous contributors to some blog would stop being mean to them, are compleeeeeetely failing to understand what's going on here.
Now I know I may get some flak for this but I feel it must be said. For actual time during meetings to be used to discuss a matter of which the University should have no control over is troubling. I'm all for 'sticking it to the man' and not being a push over, but when important things are getting less time in meetings because this blog must be debated about is when I start to question things. How important is it to not change the name? Once the name is changed than the University surely cannot complain and the Council meetings can spend more time doing what they should, instead of squabbling about the first amendment and the University of Toledos oh-so-wonderful image. Again, I love this blog and what is done here but I cannot accept that my tuition is paying for meetings about the future of a personal blog. So I guess I am wondering if there is a real reason to not change the name?
Grundoon. There is a real reason not to change the name. It is called pissoff if you don't like it. Let me tell you a story:
Several decades ago my mother became interested in growing roses. She dug her garden and planted her roses. The garden was in her front lawn. Her front lawn was crabgrass. Everyone else up and down the street grew clover.
Every year her roses grew increasingly beautiful (at least in my mother’s eyes). Mom hoped others would also find them beautiful, but discovered anyway great satisfaction in ownership and sense of accomplishment. After three years she began to believe everyone should grow roses, and said so.
All was not roses in the neighborhood, however. Neighbors with small children who daily passed by the garden on their way to school complained about the ever present danger to the safety of the young ones and other passers-by presented by the thorns on the roses. In response my mother put an artistic sign in the garden. The sign read “DANGER These Roses Have Thorns.” She realized some of the school children could not read, so she also added a stencil of a skull and crossbones image to the sign.
Several neighbors thought this warning was insufficient. One day they all stopped by Mom’s house and introduced themselves and suggested that Mom move her rose garden into the back yard. She considered this but said “No. These are my roses and I think they are beautiful. Please smell them on your way out.” They refused to do so.
Several weeks later a neighborhood petition was circulated condemning the rose garden and demanding its removal. The petition was submitted to the Block Watch with instructions to send it to city council and the mayor. My mother’s hair was already gray, but she seemed to take these events in stride because she considered her neighbors foolish and ignorant of her democratic right to grow roses in her own front lawn. She was proud to be an American.
A city councilwoman came to the door one day accompanied by an intern from the Department of Health and Safety. She served them tea and cookies. The councilwoman took out the signed petition and asked the intern to turn on a minitape recorder. “If you don’t mind” she said to my mother. My mother replied “Fine. Ready?” then announced “You can disappear my rose garden over my dead body!”
Two weeks later she walked to the market and returned to find tire tracks extending across her front lawn and through her rose garden. She called the cops. They interviewed the neighbors. No one had witnessed anything.
Mom repaired the damage to her garden. She also had my brother Tim drive her to Cabela's in Dundee to purchase herself a big-bore rifle. So if you walked down the sidewalk in front of Mom's house after that, past dusk, and slowly, you would clearly see that big-bore rifle through the big bay window, hanging high on a wall rack.
Mom tended her roses in peace after that, till she died. The house was sold. The new owners of the house rototillered up the front lawn, including the rose garden ... and then they planted clover.
I am not liking your incivility to Grundoon, who perhaps means well. That said, your story about your Mom and her rose garden was moving with a capital “M”. Honestly, I wept. It then occurred to me that your Mom’s story is analogous to events taking place involving this very news blog. Your Mom, for example, could very well represent the blog owners; and her garden, the blog itself. And the roses! The roses are the blooming news blurbs and updates and comments. Did you realize this? The thorns could be the ... the … Yes! They are like the thorny but significant A&S issues posted on the blog, which are buried in all official news organs across campus. The Round Table Report, for example.
The thorns might also represent the irreverent attitudes, phrasings and vulgarities popping up now and then in blogger posts of the many visitors to your popular web site. "Pissoff if you don't like it" is a thorn, right? No wonder the UT Administration and its faculty and student sycophants go apeshit when they read the stuff on this blog! I bet Bow Tie Larry does back flips and makes faces because he can't say "pissoff" anywhere in his own blog and media empire outlets if and when he feels like it.
WOW! Your story is, I guess, “literary” with a capital “L” because it has taught me a lot about good writing and what is a trope. I think this blog could even be used in an A&S WAC class or two as an example of great writing say, by some composition-challenged pre-pharmacy students who might seek to improve their writing skills by reading this blog.
Now that I have finally figured out what you and your colleagues who post on this blog are really about -- that you are a demonstrably effective new teaching modality -- I am going to go tell my Best Friend Tommy! Bye! (and don’t forget to apologize to Grundoon, who perhaps means well).
Dear Anonymous of the Garden Rose. I'm a foreign student and I read this blog a lot in order to improve my English and to learn American idioms. My friends too. I'm so impressed by your story. Are you an English professor? You're telling a true story. You're so pure of heart and your story made everything so clear. I need this blog more than anything else. Thanks. (May I read another of your stories soon?)
Post a Comment