What Now??

Okay, so we've all had fun at Larry's expense.(see below)  The question is what now????  Where does the university and more importantly for my local interests the College of Arts and Letters go?  We seem to almost be back where we started organizationally, which is not good.  By my count we have more administrators than when we were separate entities.  This saves money?  We're paying the football coach more than the last guy; we're paying his assistants more.  This saves money.  I have now taught here for twenty nine years and for practically every one of them I have been told in August (September when we were on quarters) how exciting the year will be; and, oh yes we have no money.  We are going to search for a Dean for Arts and Letters.  I would like to be the Dean and will do it for less than whomever you bring in.  Barring that I want on the search committee.  My governing motto:  The First Amendment to the United States Constitution.  After that everything is open.  Design courses, experiment, start centers, have fun and by all means argue logically and sensibly.  That is after all what we claim to teach.  Should be an exciting year and oh yea we have no money.

Old Friends

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/ua-board-of-trustees-severs-ties-with-executive-responsible-for-increasing-enrollment-failed-polytechnic-rebranding-1.695350

Art Leaders Call for Mass Meeting

A Visionary Leader?

The manifesto, however, remains inarticulate, unknown.

Perhaps the below will help in way of an example, a very small excerpt from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's "What is to be Done? Burning Questions of our Movement."

We urged the necessity of carrying the class struggle into the rural districts in connection with the fortieth anniversary of the emancipation of the peasantry (issue No. 3^[20] and spoke of the irreconcilability of the local government bodies and the autocracy in relation to Witte’s secret Memorandum (No. 4). In connection with the new law we attacked the feudal landlords and the government which serves them (No. 8^[21]) and we welcomed the illegal Zemstvo congress. We urged the Zemstvo to pass over from abject petitions (No. 8^[22]) to struggle. We encouraged the students, who had begun to understand the need for the political struggle, and to undertake this struggle (No. 3), while, at the same time, we lashed out at the “outrageous incomprehension” revealed by the adherents of the “purely student” movement, who called upon the students to abstain from participating in the street demonstrations (No. 3, in connection with the manifesto issued by the Executive Committee of the Moscow students on February 25). We exposed the “senseless dreams” and the “lying hypocrisy” of the cunning liberals of Rossiya^[26] (No. 5), while pointing to the violent fury with which the government-gaoler persecuted “peaceful writers, aged professors, scientists, and well-known liberal Zemstvo members” (No. 5, “Police Raid on Literature”). We exposed the real significance of the programme of “state protection for the welfare of the workers” and welcomed the “valuable admission” that “it is better, by granting reforms from above, to forestall the demand for such reforms from below than to wait for those demands to be put forward” (No. 6^[23]). We encouraged the protesting statisticians (No. 7) and censured the strike-breaking statisticians (No. 9). He who sees in these tactics an obscuring of the class-consciousness of the proletariat and a compromise with liberalism reveals his utter failure to understand the true significance of the programme of the Credo and carries out that programme de facto, however much he may repudiate it. For by such an approach he drags Social-Democracy towards the “economic struggle against the employers and the government” and yields to liberalism, abandons the task of actively intervening in every “liberal” issue and of determining his own, Social-Democratic, attitude towards this question.

  Get to it!

History is so . . .Strategic?

Preventive Measures at UT?

Steps should be taken immediately to prevent re-infestation.

Scarborough Resignation

Here's the story: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/05/university_of_akron_president_8.html

Too bad the majority of UT faculty were too cowardly and self-interested (administrative ambitions, no doubt!) to vote "no confidence" in Scarborough's big spiritual brother, Lloyd Jacobs, a few years back. UT would have been saved much grief and loss in so very many dimensions.  Alas.

Congratulations to Akron Polytechnic on a good day.

Bloggie

Update From Chair of COCA Council

Cut and pasted below please find the most recent update on the merger process from COCA Council Chair Ray Marchionni:

Hi all!

Hope summer is going well for all!  Following is an update on where we are to date with the formation of the new college.

As you already know, the new college has been named the College of Arts and Letters and the arts school is named the School of Visual and Performing Arts.  These were the names that the majority of faculty chose.  The UT-BOT Academic Affairs Committee approved the new college name as well as the arts school name; these will be on the consent agenda for the full UT-BOT meeting in June.  We will hear more on specifics after July 1, when the new college administration becomes official.

We’ve had a change on the summer co-Council with the resignation of Jay Weik who has been replaced by Brian Patrick.  

Additionally, we have made our first assignment w/re to the creation of the new college’s Constitution.  The particulars of the assignment are in an email that Jerry and I will soon send to the co-Council and to those faculty members who volunteered to work on the new Constitution.  I will send you a copy of the email once it is sent to the co-Council and volunteers so that you have insight as to how we’ll proceed.  

Both Jay Weik and Daniel Tobias have resigned their positions on the CoCA Council and have been replaced by Edmund Lingan (theatre/film) and by a music faculty member to be named at a later date.  I would like to thank both of them for their service this past year.  I suspect that after the Constitution is discussed and voted upon by the new college faculty this fall we will then proceed to discuss the formation of the new college Council.

Ray