I want to welcome and express agreement with many of the sentiments
expressed by Kim Edward Renz in a recent e'mail:
At 11:25 PM 1/7/2004 -0500, Kim Edward Renz wrote:
>Marcia, et al:
>
>I respectfully disagree with everything I just read. First of all, how is
>Mr. Lyon a "moneysuck," rather than a bright new opportunity for us to
>increase the funding of everything we do here? How much money did you and I
>raise last year? If we are not out there promoting the English Department
>and the Fine Arts Center, someone promoting the football team will get the
>money. As one who spent all of his undergraduate years in private, liberal
>arts institutions, I can say unequivically that we need to hire as many
>money-raisers as we can find.
Or more precisely, we need to hire additional money-raisers so long as the
marginal funds raised exceed the marginal cost of hiring them. Having
said that, however, let's not slide into the mistake of confusing the
realization of surplus value with its production. To attribute any firm's
revenue exclusively to its salesmen is like attributing the cost of
gasoline to people who set the dials on gas pumps. To focus TOO much on
fund raising would fit Prof Campa's metaphor of UTC as a double-wide
trailer with Doric columns.
In short, Mr Lyon can hardly be successful as a salesman if the product
he's asked to sell continues to deteriorate through neglect. Eternally the
optimist, I hope Mr Lyon will ally himself with the Faculty Federation by
devoting his fund-raising to the goal of increasing salaries generally.
> We must stop sliding down into the abyss that
>is funding for higher education in Tennessee. Where were you yesterday with
>your hard, pointed questions for Dr. Johnson?
>
>I am also sick of hearing and reading the bitch and moan sessions, valid
>though they are, about faculty and exempt staff salaries, when the State,
>not our administration, keeps cutting budgets.
Dr Renz is quite correct to locate the root cause of our funding troubles
as a political issue with the state government. The implication is that
the solution is fundamentally a political one, as I have pointed out on
numerous occasions. The sooner others join us in the political struggle
for equitable pay the sooner we can reach a solution.
At the same time, the legislature is only part of the story; the other part
is what priorities are applied in allocating funds the university is able
to wrest from it. Here the Faculty Federation has been in the forefront of
the struggle to maintain the integrity and standard of UTC. I hope Dr Renz
and others will join us in this as well.
>Tell me we don't need more
>staff support and to pay them a livable wage. They did not go to some fancy
>college, so they suffer. If anyone on this campus has not felt the crunch
>of non-exempt down-sizing, I invite you to send your extra people to the
>rest of us.
Dr Renz is correct again to draw attention to the pay of non-exempt
staff. It's important to be clear, as Dr Renz does, that those of us who
sympathize with the goals of the Faculty Federation seek NOT TO REDUCE the
well-deserved salaries of those in administrative posts, but to INCREASE
the salaries of the rest of us to a similarly high level, in an equitable way.
Of course this includes non-exempt staff. The faculty federation has
welcomed involvement of those outside tenured faculty. The federation
expressed support for contingent workers during Campus Equity Week in
October. Although few tenured faculty showed their solidarity by
attending the rally called by contingent faculty during that week, those
who did were federation members as I reported in an earlier email.
There can be little doubt that the actions of contingent faculty and the
Federation provided encouragement and incentive that led to the partial
relief Provost Friedl allowed them. One of the important issues raised by
the national organizers of Campus Equity Week was the need to seek
across-the-board pay increases instead of falling for the management ruse
of so-called merit pay increases. As mentioned above, a university is
creating a product through joint effort. Rewarding employees
differentially, such as the doubling of salaries of the provost and
chancellor over the last 10 or 15 years while the rest of us have barely
kept up with inflation, or rewarding "star attractions" like the phantom
denizens of the sin center who are rarely seen except in the company of
Congressman Wamp and whose contribution to the full faculty has been to
assist in denying its last meeting a quorum, is to do a great disservice.
Whether faculty and exempt staff are finally represented in collective
bargaining by the same organization is a matter to be worked out, but
solidarity between the two must be maintained, and it's heartening to know
that Dr Renz and others feel the same way.
>And then perhaps you will not ask why there is no tissue in the
>restrooms or why you have to learn IRIS, have to do your own copying (that
>is what federal work study is for, right?), or name any number of other
>services. I dictated letters before I reentered academia. Let's do a formal
>poll: How many full-time faculty work two jobs? How many full-time
>non-exempt staff? How many non-exempts have to work somewhere else because
>someone trimmed sporadic pay, which was a great benefit and is now almost
>gone?
>
>Please pardon me when I wonder how adding a new service beyond Raven
>affects academic freedom. In my naivete I thought that was about teaching
>practices, not about selling desks and discussing whether or not a 2-way
>street slows down traffic or who thinks we ought to secede from the
>University of Tennessee. This is, if anything, a more inclusive situation
>than ever. By adding UTCINFO, we have more opportunities to do the business
>of the University. A "timesuck?" Is Raven going to slow down? I must have
>missed that one.
>
>How is Big Brother controlling what we receive? No one says we have to
>filter anything, for now we can receive two business messages instead of
>just one. We have more rights. No one said they are going to do away with
>The Vagina Monologues because the word "vagina" is sinful. Hey, does your
>computer underline "vagina" in green? I am ready to write The Penis
>Dialogues, which I have threatened to do for years. Why is "timesuck" a
>misspelling and universally accepted terms for body parts inflammatory? Why
>doesn't someone ask, hey, Eudora infringes on my right to use the word
>"suck?" And, doggone it, "timesuck" should have a red and a green line
>under it. Isn't this a ridiculous argument?
>
>I am sure there are many out there who receive my messages about the Patten
>Series (some who come and others who complain that they should not have to
>pay for anything that comes to campus) and say, "Man, doesn't that guy ever
>stop?" And if I hear once more, "Why don't you bring X group or Y company"
>from people who don't give something new or someone they don't know a
>chance, then I think I will start asking for money from them....every
>single time! How many faculty and staff heard the King's Singers, attended
>the world premier of the head of the NEA's opera or saw Dayton Contemporary
>Dance Company at the Tivoli last year?
>
>Well, perhaps I have expected too much from Raven and the campus, for I am
>embarrassed by the poor attendance at the Series this fall. The next person
>I want to talk to is Bob Lyon, because I would like to be here long enough
>to hire those theatre companies Dr. Noe and I both love, who now cost twice
>what they did 10 years ago and who have priced themselves out of our
>budget. I want to stop paying for my own travel to do my job. I want
>someone besides me to scream, "Why are the arts fluff, extra-curricular,
>not essential?" Literature is a "Fine Art, at least that is what I was
>taught. You don't have to write fiction to say "Would you like fries with
>that?" Does that mean we don't need English in the schools either?
I'd like to join Dr Renz in expressing my hopes for an audience with Mr
Lyon. Although I must emphasize I do NOT speak for the faculty federation,
there has been discussion in that group of offering to work with Chancellor
Stacy in a campaign to approach local donors about a campaign that would
raise funds to support pay increases at UTC. Such a campaign should be the
top priority for Mr Lyon, and I look forward to assisting him in it in any
way possible. I'm sure Dr Renz, Ms Dodd, Dr Lindgren and Mr Bowman feel
the same way. Whether or not Mr Lyon espouses this priority will be the
first test in answering my question about his position being a boondoggle.
Finally, in Dr Renz' spirit of wanting not to use UTCINFO to attack, and Mr
Bowman's appeal to family values, I want to remind everyone of the
difference between the messenger and the message. We all know Jacob
Grimm's story of the Emperor's new clothes. Suppose the boy in the story
had not pointed out that the Emperor was naked, but rather asked, as Prof
Noe and I did, if the Imperial tailors were engaging in a
boondoggle. Would he still have been excoriated for his bitching and moaning?
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