Syndicate and Hague

So they did it. The Regents, sans two, voted to destroy the Regents Scholarship. There are not enough expletives in the world to express how I’m feeling right now.

Here’s the thing, though. It’s our own damn fault.

Let me repeat that: it’s our own damn fault.

One of the Regents who voted against the proposal cited phone calls she’d gotten as one reason she would not vote to destroy the scholarship. Public outcry does work and if 2,300 people take classes every year, 4,000 workers should have been at that rally. Do you really think they would have passed it if McNamara plaza had been filled with U employees and the TV reporters who would have followed a crowd like that? I don’t.

Maybe we’ve just gotten so used to getting screwed that we don’t see the point of making an issue of it anymore. Cut pay? Sure. At least I have a job. But what happens when they come for more? How willing are you to have your compensation package sucked dry so that we can keep executive salaries at a “freeze” and not a “cut”?

If you weren’t there and didn’t make phone calls:
You all just took a cut and you didn’t even try to fight it. Those of you who make money and don’t need it let your lowest paid workers take a cut and you didn’t even try to fight it.

Protest works. But it only works when people show up. Sadly, those who proposed anti-employee solutions were able to waltz off with more of our money because we as a whole didn’t bother to try.

And that pisses me off. And depresses me.

So where the hell am I going to find an extra 3 grand a year? Anyone? I guess I’ll start applying for scholarships that could have gone to other students. I was actually not doing that because I felt I didn’t need the money as badly. That’s changed now, though…

For those of you who missed the rally, or want to forward this on, or use the arguments, I’m pasting the text of my speech from this afternoon’s rally below.

I want to start by saying that though the administration often frames dissent like this as us hating the University, they’re wrong. We love the University. I am a graduate of the English department, and when I moved back here from New York I made an effort to get a job at the University of Minnesota. Our faculty and students are wonderful, and it was actually my job here at the University that inspired me to go back to school and work on my PhD.

Everyone has made fantastic arguments about the encouraging the culture of learning at the University and this being a big part of who we are and why we are here, but I’m going to focus on those of us whose degrees or coursework directly pertain to our jobs.

First of all, I will hammer home the fact that this is a pay cut. Not only is it a pay cut, but it is one of the only cuts in our compensation that will almost exclusively affect low- and middle-wage employees.

Whether it’s the first degree or PhD, the people who take these courses are people for whom education will improve their professional lives. Senior-level employees and faculty members, who for the most part make much more than the rest of us, will not feel this cut personally. And I want to thank those faculty and senior employees who support us and know that cutting the Regents scholarship is the wrong thing to do.

Let’s talk about what kind of pay cut this is.

If you are working on your first bachelors degree, taking one four credit course at a time each spring, summer, and fall, you will be paying approximately $390 per year. An employee working towards their first degree makes less money, so based on a salary of $25,000 per year, that is a 1.5% pay cut.

Let’s say you have a Bachelor’s degree and let’s be generous and say you make $37,000 per year. At the 25% rate, taking a spring, summer and fall undergraduate course will cost you about $950 – about a 2.5% pay cut.

Taking a graduate course each semester at $37,000 per year will cost you about $1,900 – about a 5% pay cut.

Who is being asked to sacrifice? Who is taking the pay cut?

I am a technology professional in the civil service/bargaining unit here at the University. I am also a PhD student in Curriculum and Instruction. Part of my focus is on Learning Technologies. My PhD program directly benefits my boss and my department and my school. I am not unique. The University of Minnesota staff in my courses bring inspiration and new knowledge back to our departments so that we create improve the output of the University.

This pay cut effectively renders the education that is part of our compensation package unaffordable. It will lead to decreased inspiration, innovation, and that will affect the strategic positioning of the University and the quality we currently provide.

This pay cut will affect staff recruitment and retention. Once the economy recovers, the University of Minnesota’s ability to recruit talented staff will decrease, as will our ability to retain staff. Other schools offer dependent and spousal tuition support at varying levels, we offer none. Decreasing a part of our compensation that doesn’t stand up to what other schools currently offer is misguided.

This pay cut is not about the myth of 10% annual increase: the Regents Scholarship increases in cost on average 10% a year. So does tuition. The program itself isn’t getting too expensive, tuition is.

Using short-term tax incentives to market a pay cut that affects long-term policy decisions is fraudulent. Destroying the Regents Scholarship and justifying it with temporary tax incentives that only a small part of our population can even use is disingenuous at best.

The Regents Scholarship didn’t become a perk until the administration wanted to decimate it. Prior to that, it was part of the compensation package that HR reminds us of on an annual basis.

This is a pay cut.

We are better employees because of our classes. We have new ideas, fresh ideas, current ideas. We make the University a better place, we make the education better, and we keep morale strong.

Some of you may have heard stories of our ridiculous landlord situation in the past. I tend to joke about things I know are bad because, well, what are you going to do? We were in a lease, the rent was cheap, and as long as their fucked up existence stayed on the second floor, I was prepared to run under the radar.

Of course, this isn’t exactly what happened - even before Thursday the drunk made creepy statements and we did have to suffer through their fights and his screaming to himself and stumbling. But I would just close my eyes and think about how fast we were saving for a house and carry on.

The problem with people who are unbalanced/abusive is that eventually they will focus their crazy onto you.

Thursday night, the drunk was screaming to himself again, maybe into his boyfriend’s voicemail (we soon found he liked to leave long, screaming voicemail messages) and we had just had it. We were on a path towards a night like the night we decided we were going to look at houses - a night of being woken up repeatedly for hours with their screaming raging stumbling falling crap.

Megan called up there. She asked if he could keep it down. He responded by directing the crazy, violent language at us. Though I wrote a transcript of the actual voicemail, the words in print don’t really do it justice. It was seething, raging stuff. He was screaming so loud you must have been able to hear him down the street.

After ignoring calls to Megan’s phone and my phone and with no break in his screaming for about 15-20 minutes (I heard the message he left just being in my apartment because he was screaming), that was it. There was no way staying in the house was safe - and we both knew we were never going to sleep in that place again.

We grabbed our computers, shoved Mila in the cat carrier and tried to shove Rufus in with her - we only had one carrier then, that has changed - but we couldn’t get him in. So we stuck him in the only other thing with a zipper: Megan’s computer bag.

Of course, that was a bad idea. Computer bags are not made for cats. This is obvious. However, in the moment it seemed like the best idea of any. When we were rushing to our cars, Rufus got out and ran into the street. I am so thankful that he is loud, because he just parked himself under a truck and started crying. Of course, I was crying because if I lost Rufus because of that fucking loser drunk I was going to lose it myself.

Megan grabbed him and we threw him in my car. So that was fine then.

We got to my friend Angie’s house at about 12:30 a.m., dog and cats in tow. Didn’t sleep much.

Some people asked why we didn’t call the cops at the time. Here’s the thing: even if the cops had come and hauled him away, the longest he was going to be held for is like a day. A day is not long enough to pack our stuff and get out. And I had no idea what kind of shape he would be in coming back. Priority one was escaping.

Anyway. Friday morning.

First thing we did: call into work, email our professors, go straight to the post office and change our address. Then we went back to the house with no small amount of anxiety to pack up anything we might need in the next couple of months. For the hour and a half we were there, the drunk was still ranting upstairs. About us. I’m not sure he’d ever gone to bed. About 10 minutes before we left, he stopped - we presume it was because he passed out.

I organized on Facebook and Twitter to get people to help pack and rented us a storage space. Decided that it was most advisable to hire movers.

I should break in here for a moment and say that - especially in light of what it was like actually filing the police report on Monday - I am so lucky to have had the help of my cousin, who works with the precinct we lived in. She was there with us the whole time we were there Saturday, and Sunday until the movers came and we were getting out. Most people aren’t so fortunate.

Anyway - Sunday we packed like demons. We had so much help all day, and there’s no way we could have done what we did without those of you who came. We finished packing up most of the house in about 6 hours. It was amazing.

The drunk didn’t bother us for the rest of the weekend, by the way. Like many awful, violent people, he’s a coward and without the fuel of the right mixture of rage and booze/drugs, he’s afraid of confrontation. This isn’t to say I didn’t have massive anxiety the whole time. Because I totally did.

Saturday night we moved from Angie’s to a basement apartment of the parent of a friend of Megan’s.

Sunday we cleaned up the last bit at the old house and waited for the movers. They were supposed to come at 4, but didn’t actually get there until about 7. It was nervewracking, but it eventually ended and they finished the move at 10:30 p.m.

Yesterday we filed the police report. It sucked. To have been taken seriously by everyone all weekend, it really sucked to go in and not even be able to talk about everything that happened. We were rushed out, nothing was written down but our names and the drunk’s name, and I have no idea what’s actually in the report.

This upset me for a while, but screw it. We filed the report, we mailed the landlord a letter saying we’d filed a report and he’d broken our lease by making us live underneath someone who threatened us, and we were out. If he wants to come at us for something, the cops may not have cared to listen to the screaming lunatic on our voicemail, but no one who actually listens to what he was saying and how he was saying it will have any qualms about backing us up.

We’re moving again tomorrow. We’re very tired. Mila is so stressed out she has hives and rashes all over and I had to take her to the vet and get a freakin cone on her head so she doesn’t lick all her skin off. I am *so* *mad* at the drunk and the landlord for their stupid, screwed up lives and that their stupid, screwed up lives made our lives hell.

So there we are. That’s what happened.

Here is a basic transcript from the insane screaming from the landlord’s boyfriend from last night. If only I had it all on my voice mail. Sadly, I do not. Here is the personality we’re escaping from. (from the voice mail)

I’m sorry you got smart with me tonight, watch what I can do…don’t get cocky with me if you think i get loud. You better talk nice to me. You can go ahead and get as smart ass as you want to, because you’ll never find a house like i’ve given to you. So don’t get bitchy with me cuz I’m not in a good mood tonight, got it? And i don’t like your fuckin old dog destroying my backyard. Don’t get smart at me if I’m loud because your fuckin cow she can’t even ride a bike she falls over and wakes me up three times a day. Don’t get smart with me you fuckin dykes. And you’re dirty dykes, your house stinks…you want somethin? Take your fuckin old dog and get the fuck out of my home, got it bitch? Go find somethin…go find a place, go find a fuckin place you asshole don’t ever talk to me again. Watch what i do. Watch what a lawyer can do, bitch.

I’m assuming that I’m the “cow” but I totally take issue with him claiming I fall off my bike! I have never fallen off my bike. Silly.

Okay, that was making overly light of the conversation, but that’s what it was…that’s what was on the voicemail. God, I love technology.

And, um, yeah, so we’re getting out of his fucking house. YIPPEE!!!

There’s lots of talk in my academic life of “authentic learning,” something I’m personally quite the fan of. But I’m thinking of it in terms of my writing. I had this dumb idea that I would create a second blog that would be just for compiling all of my research into one place and commenting on it.

Why was this a dumb idea? Because it’s not at all how I actually process information.

I don’t think it was a dumb idea to start a second blog to save you good people from having to read things about academia and research (not that I’ve even written anything yet, that’s how dumb this idea was). It was just a dumb idea to think that it was useful to force a round peg like me (learns by talking about ideas/informal discussion) into a square hole (an empirical blog - seriously! dumb!).

It really shows some deeply embedded (and wrong) philosophy in my own brain about what writing is. It’s what I’m going to call “Research Paper 101 writing.” Like forming coherent paragraphs and boring sentences somehow means you know something/learned something. I don’t believe that even in theory, so why do I believe it in my gut? It feels like a religion I have to unlearn, to get deprogrammed from.

And so it goes. Screw empirical writing on blogs. That’s totally inauthentic. Give me colloquial…fragmented sentences…thinking out loud and in public…sticking my foot in my mouth…setting myself up for a challenge…

With the massive amount of twitter activity on the topic, I’m sure you’ve seen that Amazon.com (I won’t link) has gotten some sizable damage from deleting the sales rank of not only LGBT books (academic, erotic, plain old fiction, any and all of it period), but of feminist books and books like “The Joy of Sex.” This means that books sink to the bottom in search results or aren’t displayed at all (Bastard Out of Carolina comes in 5th at Amazon, and in its rightful place of 1st on Barnes and Noble, the new non-fiction book, “Unfriendly Fire,” on military policy and don’t ask don’t tell does not even show up on Amazon’s actual book listing now - only the Kindle version is returned in the search results), and that they don’t show up on the main pages if they’re top sellers.

If you look at the #amazonfail twitter search, you’ll see all the links to more information on what’s going on.

What I want to highlight is that homophobia is not a new phenomenon at Amazon.com. Many years ago - ten years ago, to be exact - Amazon Bookstore here in Minneapolis sued Amazon.com for trademark infringement. The dot com’s legal strategy? Make Amazon Bookstore out to be a bunch of lesbians selling lesbian books and dismiss the suit that way. Nevermind that Amazon Bookstore had best selling literature on its shelves, and in recent years had an extensive children’s section to serve the population of the South Minneapolis neighborhood it was in - no, “feminist” and “women-owned” meant “lesbian” to Amazon.com and its lawyers and they played that one out to the end.

I don’t need to repeat the excellent article Salon.com wrote back in 1999, but I would like to note that ten years ago questioning people under oath about their personal sexuality was far more intimidating than it would be today. And it’s not like it’s an easy topic now.

I will say this - ten years ago, the Internet wouldn’t have been filled with outraged people on Twitter. Things are really changing. And I’m grateful for tools like Twitter that allow for massive dissemination of information at lightning speed. Amazing.

Amazon has been an #amazonfail for years, you just didn’t know it. Thanks to Twitter and the Internet, now you do. Don’t forget it.

Shop local, folks. You can start at IndieBound if you don’t know your local booksellers.

The common portrayal of gays and lesbians in the media is this: dual income, no kids; highly educated; artistic; relatively affluent; white. It’s been part of the argument some have made about gay marriage - think of all the money gay and lesbian people would bring in with their fancy weddings!

This observation is, of course, somewhat true. The only reason Megan and I are traveling out East for our wedding (along with a few friends, all of us contributing to the Massachusetts economy) is because it’s legal there and not here in Minnesota. Middle class people can travel, upper class people can travel and throw lavish affairs.

This perception was something that ran under some anti-gay sentiment during the arguments over proposition 8, and also reinforces the idea that gays are just rich, white, and privileged.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are poor gay people. It shouldn’t surprise me that gays and lesbians are poorer than our heterosexual counterparts, but it did. The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law released the results of a study they did that compiled and analyzed data from the 2000 Census, the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the 2003 and 2005 California Health Interview Surveys. via Echelon

Though poverty is on the rise among all Americans, the authors of the study–entitled Poverty in the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community–suggest that unique social and political aspects of LGB life play a role in contributing to higher rates of poverty in this community, including vulnerability to employment discrimination, inability to marry and higher numbers of uninsured.

Key findings include:

• After comparing families with similar characteristics, gay and lesbian couple families are significantly more likely to be poor than are heterosexual married couple families;
• In general, lesbian couples have much higher poverty rates than either different-sex couples or gay male couples;
• African-Americans in same-sex couples have poverty rates that are significantly higher than black people in different-sex married couples;
• People in same-sex couples who live in rural areas have poverty rates that are twice as high as same-sex couples who live in large metropolitan areas;
• Employment discrimination, lack of access to marriage, and a greater likelihood of being uninsured exacerbate poverty among LGB people.
• Children of gay couples are living in poverty at a rate that is twice as much as the children of straight married couples. (this one is via Pam’s House Blend)

Also, a note about the the lack of transpeople in this study:

Because no representative data exist for transgender people, the report does not analyze poverty in that community. Previous Williams Institute studies, however, found that large proportions of transgender people report very low incomes, which suggest that poverty is also a major concern for transgender people.

This seems like an important analysis, and sad. It was really amusing to both Megan and me today when we drove behind some bigot’s truck with his “Marriage = 1 man + 1 woman” bumper sticker, pulled in front of them so they would be forced to drive behind my big ol’ rainbow-stickered car.

That is what life is like when you’re comfortable. You live in a big, liberal city and the bigots are out of place driving down 28th street. You don’t feel like the people who dominate this report. You have agency. There are parts of your existence you’re powerless over, but on the whole you’re not powerless. Hell, in my case, your life is filled with people - mostly straight - who go and buy you the stones for your wedding rings because you can’t afford them right now yourself.

I think it is important to recognize that those of us who are gay and comfortable - incomes we can live on, jobs we can be out at, relationships we don’t have to hide - are like refugees who have found the safehouses. It’s not like we’re truly ignorant of our status - people feel free to slap their prejudices on their bumpers, even in Minneapolis - but that we have the privilege to pretend they don’t exist at times.

Objectively, I know the people around me are awesome. Really, the reason my life is generally amazing is because I have such wonderful people around to have fun with. I know this.

However, sometimes people do things that just floor me.

It’s my birthday next week and there’s nothing I like more than organizing a big outing full of the people who make life interesting and good so that we can go and drink beer and eat bar food - so, birthday happy hour! All I really want is for people to show up and have fun and that plan always seems to work pretty well.

That all went as planned, but…

Before coming to the party tonight, my boss rounded up all my friends who were coming on Facebook and covertly went about organizing a group gift. Which would have been really nice in and of itself. It’s always quite sweet when someone goes and rounds people up to get something for you.

The backstory on this is that Megan and I are having our wedding rings made for us. We’d wanted to have some little diamonds on the rings, but it was just out of our budget. So we compromised and had decided to get just the bands for now and save up for the cost of labor and the small diamonds and do it down the road.

So you should know where this story is going, right? My boss knew that we’d altered the plans for our rings because I’d talked about it at work a couple months ago. He orchestrated all these people together, slyly got the name of my designer from me, and they paid for the labor and diamonds that we’d wanted but couldn’t afford. With money left over, even.

Neither Megan nor I am really processing this right now. It’s incredibly overwhelming to have people do something like this for you. I’m also not very eloquent right now.

I still can’t think of much to say. I’m just fortunate and grateful and if I start forgetting how lucky I am to have this kind of a life with all of you people in it, just smack me upside the head or something.

It’s been a while since I’ve written something that was sans-argument/critique. But today I just need help with writer’s block.

This semester has been kind of rough for me. There was a 3-week long sustained peak to a crisis that is external to me, my job, and school, but drained me of a lot of my mental/emotional energy right at the beginning of the semester and I’m still paying for it. Trying to keep all the plates spinning.

One of the spinning plates that I let drop was a bio I’m supposed to write about myself for the Culture & Teaching site. I promised it to Thom by the end of January - and now it’s March. It’s not like I didn’t work on it. I did. But the paper was a void of white space and everything I wrote was craptastic.

Contrary to popular belief, I hate officially bragging about myself or making myself sound important. If I do that, it’s usually self-deprecating or so ridiculous and over the top (I’m going to take over the world) it begs a joke to be made at my expense.

Actually sitting down and crafting something about me? Sigh. It’s really hard.

Maybe you could tell me if any of this is interesting/what you’d want to read more of if you were looking at joining a PhD program…yes/no? Eh. We’ll see what comes of this.

I’m going to write it in Saraspeak right now, because I want to get ideas down.

For my entire professional and educational life, I’ve been treading this weird line between technology, composition and social justice. I was an English BA, and if I’d bothered to file the paperwork for it my minor would have been Political Science. I interned and wrote for newspapers during college, but my two student jobs had me designing my first website , creating databases, maintaining a computer lab, and helping with the very early brainstorming about online writing labs at the U. This was all 1997-99.

So then I move to NYC with vague ideas about what I wanted to do, wound up working on print communications and a website redesign at NYU. I did that for a while and decided to say to hell with practicality, I want to study poetry. And so I got my MFA and it was so awesome. I taught composition and literature. I wrote massive amounts. I loved teaching. I miss teaching. Those were two wonderful, wonderful years. At the same time, though, news of my technical knowledge spread and one of my jobs wound up being print design and web design. I also took freelance jobs editing and proofreading and tutoring. Ran the MFA reading series. Poetry editor for our journal. I’m really hyperactive.

Back to Minnesota. More freelancing, proofreading, editing. Then a totally random communications job where I did lots of print, ran the website, and sold graves. (Seriously. I’m actually quite good with grieving families. It was a weird thing to discover about myself.)

While I was working, I was applying for adjunct jobs every chance I got. It is so hard to find work at colleges. I saw the pile of applications when I dropped mine off one time and I just wanted to collapse. However, as luck would have it, I actually scored an interview at the U and got to teach comp here as an adjunct.

It was awesome, but fleeting, as those jobs often are. But then I wound up in my current job - back running webstuff again. Got an adjunct job at St. Kate’s for a semester, which was fun.

Then I got intellectually stuck. I always have an idea for what’s next, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. When I looked at PhD programs, I kept coming back to the curriculum & instruction program. But I was pretty torn. Even though a lot of the tech opportunities in my life have been accidental, I really enjoy them. I also know that focusing only on tech won’t make me happy or sustain me. I am obsessed with politics and culture, with social justice. Sometimes I think that’s what made me love teaching composition, and what made me a good teacher - I think learning to write well is one of the most empowering things we can do. Being able to argue well is not a gift, it’s a skill, and it can be learned and crafted.

See why this is so hard? This is long as hell.

Anyway, so when I discovered I could maybe do both the learning technologies track (fulfilling my tech needs) and the culture and teaching side (fulfilling my critical needs), everything clicked.

So here I am. And it’s pretty awesome. The CAT teachers are really interested in what I know technically, and the LT teachers are supportive of me taking ideas in critical directions. It’s also hard. When you’re trying to merge worlds and philosophies, and there isn’t anyone quite modeling how you perceive things, it can be kind of frustrating. Not all frustration is bad, though.

My fellow CAT students are freakin awesome. The rapport many of the students have with each other, and the ways in which they approach the world, remind me of my peers in my poetry program. Really insightful and smart and funny. I can’t tell you how much I love going to a bar and listening to people hash out a debate about - say - the representation of Hmong kids in Gran Torino. These are people who have an acute sense of the need for social justice in education and for us to take a critical lens to a world many take for granted as is.

The faculty are also freakin awesome. They’re really supportive and committed to us. They each have refined specialties and I’m so excited to spend the next several years with them in some way, shape, or form.

(By the way, I could also write nice things about the LT folks, but this is for the CAT site, so I thought I’d focus on them).

Anyway. I don’t know what to do with this. Also, now I’m sad about the Regents scholarship again. I desperately don’t want to put school on hiatus and/or slow it down…

When I moved back to Minnesota, I had my eyes on the University. I wanted a job at the U for a few reasons: I’m committed to education and enhancing education, I think the University itself is a great school overall, and I knew (despite my protestations to the contrary) that I was shopping for a PhD and a way to pay for it.

The University of Minnesota, like many other universities, provides free tuition to its staff. It’s a fundamental element of an educational organization - encouraging your workforce to be educated helps your organization and drawing smart, ambitious people into your workplace by offering free tuition also helps your organization.

So when faced with the budget problem, what does the University do? The one solid proposal that Bruininks put forth via email on Monday was to cut the tuition benefit to 75%. Other parts of the proposal were not firm and kind of wishy washy (likely a pay freeze, but they have to talk to the unions; maybe closing the U over holidays, but they’re not sure).

Some have said that we as employees shouldn’t feel so entitled to the free tuition, but when I’ve gotten that glossy, 4-color brochure from HR that tells me how much the University actually pays me because of things like tuition reimbursement and therefore justifies them paying us less than market rate for our jobs, I’m expected to view the tuition-reimbursement as compensation.

Now it’s a “gift”? Sorry. No.

The other part of that letter from Bruininks is there was no end-date on that 75%. Which means that there’s no deadline, which means if it passes the Regents, it will stay.

So you have smart, ambitious staff who are stuck (momentarily) due to the market. But I can’t imagine that people who could make more elsewhere will stay as the non-salary aspects of our compensation are stripped away. It’s a bad long-term move.

Additionally, nowhere in that email did Bruininks talk about pay equity. There are a larger number of faculty and administrators at the University who make between $150k-500k than you realize (and a few who make more). These are people who have benefited greatly from the boom times, and they are the ones who should sacrifice now. Cutting the pay of someone who makes that much money will not impact them in the same way that it impacts someone making $30K. And changing the tuition reimbursement is a pay cut that will disproportionately impact people lower on the economic ladder.

Call me a socialist if you want, but I don’t believe that the budget should be balanced on the backs of the lower and middle classes. It doesn’t need to be and it shouldn’t be.

I get so angry at the University sometimes. I see our follies and our waste and our disparities and I really don’t understand why other people don’t call out when the U is visibly acting contrary to its mission and obligations. People are always getting caught up in fear of being honest about things, and I think that does us a disservice. I did post-secondary option at the U, I got my BA from CLA, I taught as an adjunct here, and I’m both a staff member and a graduate student now. My parents and my brother are U alums too. I’ve worked at and studied at other schools (New York University, Brooklyn College) and there are things that the U does better than either, hands down. However, there are also things we do worse.

What I’m saying is that you don’t have to drink the kool aid to be a fierce advocate for the University. I think real advocates for the U are the people who are willing to challenge administrative decisions and who want the U to improve and serve as a model university.

What Bruininks is proposing right now? Not okay. Maybe it’s time for the Minnesota Daily to report on salary information like they have in the past. It’s public data, you know…it might put these decisions in perspective.