Oooh, right on, Fritz!!!  Beautifully said!!!  And in my deeply help opinion after 30 years at UTC, exactly on target.

Leland Robinson
Sociology

-----Original Message-----
From: Fritz Efaw <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] 
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2003 16:58:29 -0400
Subject: [UTCSTAFF] Fwd: minutes of faculty meeting and Re: [UTCSTAFF] Did you know that UTC is for poor students only?

>Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2003 14:51:44 -0400
>To: FACULTY
>From: Fritz Efaw <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: minutes of faculty meeting and Re: [UTCSTAFF] Did you know that
>UTC is for poor students only?
>
>This item is offered in anticipation of the up-coming general faculty meeting.
>
>It will be recalled that at the last meeting on April 22 I raised a
>question about the disparity between handling of CPR awards at UTK and UTC.
>
>
>At 02:18 PM 4/29/2003 -0400, Richard Rice wrote:
>
>>Friedl has sent me the following information he obtained after our
>>Faculty Meeting and your comments about the $5,000 PTR reward up there. I
>>will post this correction along with some other interesting information
>>others have sent me about the meeting, but I will also say that your main
>>point, as I see it, is that the amount is added to base, which means a
>>lot of money each subsequent year.
>>
>> From Dr. Friedl:
>>Dr. Levy responded that he does not know how that myth started among the
>>UTC faculty, but that it is just that -- a myth. At Knoxville, a faculty
>>member who completes the CPR review receives an evaluation at one of four
>>levels: exceptional, above average, average, or below average. If the
>>rating is exceptional, the faculty member receives an additional $3000
>>added to her/his base salary; for above average, the amount is $1500; for
>>average, it is zero, and for below average, the remediation measures kick
>>in. Dr. Levy went on to say that one of the reasons for Knoxville's
>>dissatisfaction with the CPR process is that about 90 percent of all
>>faculty who have undergone CPR review have received one of the two top
>>ratings. He said that standards have been very loose, and in the absence
>>of a more rigorous review process the administrators on that campus felt
>>that the reward system did not make sense -- it was effectively converted
>>by the faculty from a reward for merit to an across-the-board raise,
>>which was not what was originally intended.
>>
>>
>>Do you have any information that would contradict Bob Levy's information?
>>The point about faculty making it an ad hoc across the board increase
>>seems to me a result of a plan forced upon us, and offered as a modest
>>incentive for losing tenure rights.
>>
>>Richard
>
>OK, I was wrong; it was $3K instead of $5K.  So what?  Levy vastly
>exaggerates my importance to label this a myth.
>
>ONE of my points, and probably the most important, was about adding the
>$2K ,or $5K or whatever, to base pay. Another was the issue of attaining
>parity with Knoxville. A third point was to ask whether he Stacy and
>others will make it a top priority both to achieve parity and to restore
>the $2K on a permanent basis.  IMHO, Friedl evaded the third point by
>saying what he WOULD do IF he had the money. To which I ask, "Why DIDN'T
>you help us in the PAST when you had the chance? Give everyone who has
>already passed PTR a permanent $2K, and THEN we'll talk about the
>future."  When they were passing out the bucks UTK got in there and
>decided to add on to base pay.  Why did UTC miss that?
>
>I think I know why we got as little as we did, and Friedl is right--it
>isn't directly his fault. The problem then is that (1) we've gotten the
>run-around--Shumaker said, in direct response to a question I asked when
>he visited UTC last term, that the local campus administration is fully
>responsible for allocation of funds, while Friedl/Stacy claimed they were
>constrained by Shumaker & co.; and (2) the problem is a larger political
>issue that everyone--Friedl, Stacy, the UTC Faculty Senate, the kingpins
>of the Chattanooga ruling elite--is too chicken-shit to confront.  What's
>needed is a long-term campaign at ALL levels to improve funding for
>UTC.  Friedl isn't directly responsible for the solution, but he's as much
>a part of the problem as everyone else.
>
>Levy is tipping his hand here. In describing standards as "very loose" and
>calling for a "more rigorous" process he shows how the true purpose of CPR
>is, and always has been, an attempt to divide the faculty, to turn us
>against one another, and to make us the agents of our own impoverishment.
>It's a classic ruse of management to speak of "reward for merit" when in
>fact there is no way to reliably or meaningfully measure marginal
>productivity. The truth is that "what was originally intended" was nothing
>but imposition of a managerial ideology in which intellectual workers are
>treated as automatons to be divided and conquered. This is a declaration
>of class warfare.
>
>Levy is also being thoroughly disingenuous, or worse.  Those present at
>the March 5, 1998, Faculty Council meeting, where the CPR plot was first
>unveiled, may recall that in response to questions I put to them, Homer
>Fisher stated that he "expected that the majority of faculty will receive
>Meritorious ratings," and Levy stated that "there will be no quota system"
>limiting the number of faculty to receive a Meritorious rating to 20% or
>any other figure. [Meritorious indicates the highest category,
>corresponding to UTC's "Exceptional Merit" rating].
>
>For his part, Friedl APPEARS to want to go along with the ideological
>onslaught. Perhaps he's just trying to be a loyal cadre, but his approving
>words about the multi-tiered rating scheme suggest he buys into a
>psychological model of a "reward system" that makes no sense.  Stacy, for
>his part, clearly wants to pick out a few for rewards, having recently
>told the press he'd rather make two percent of salaries competitive than
>spread it around more evenly.  And then there's the Hamilton County state
>legislative contingent: half a dozen Republican assemblymen who last
>spring showed they don't know the difference between progressive and
>regressive taxation, Sen. Fowler, who, having taken his degree from UTC
>doesn't particularly want to help the next generation do the same, and
>Sen. Crutchfield, who appears willing to take $84K a year out of the UTC
>budget in patronage.  We really should turn out the lot of these Democrat
>and Republican scoundrels at the next elections.
>
>Considering all this, and with the pusillanimity of the Faculty Senate,
>isn't about time we thought about organizing for collective bargaining?

Fritz Efaw
Economics professor
University of Chattanooga (the scenic city),
Tennessee (greenest state in the land of the free),
U.S. of ever-lovin' A.