Daily Archives: March 15, 2011

Policy on posting links

Folks:

A few of you have already begun sending me links (click to mail me directly) to sites and articles you’d like posted here.

That’s fine, and I encourage you to do so. Here’s how I’d prefer to handle this–

If you send me a link, please make sure it works before sending it. I won’t have the energy to track down and correct them; if I click it and it’s not live, I’ll just skip it.

I’ll post them as headlines so readers can click on titles they think look interesting, rather than simply posting url’s.

If you want to increase the likelihood that people will read what you send me, it’s not a bad idea if you include a quick capsule/summary of it. I’ll post them if you send them, but I won’t generally write them for you. Again, a time management issue.

I’ll post one page per day of links; I’m sure there will be some that I’d post every day anyway, so there should be a “Links [date]” post each day. If you have an item that you REALLY believe needs to get out quicker than that, you can say so, and I’ll be as responsive as I can.

Looking forward to seeing what you send.

–Seth

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Filed under Uncategorized

Website with info and resources for student organizing against budget cuts

[I posted this yesterday, but am updating it with a live link–and since I figured out how to link the blog to Facebook, I wanted the post to go there too.  –Seth]

For further information
Contact: Kevin P. Kodish (800-932-0587, ext. 3020)

For immediate release
Monday, March 14, 2011

Website Launched to Assist Students
in the Fight Against State Budget Cuts

HARRISBURG – The president of the organization representing the 6,000 faculty members and coaches at Pennsylvania’s 14 state-owned universities today announced that a new website has been established in order to provide a vehicle for Pennsylvania students to fight against Governor Tom Corbett’s proposed 54 percent cut to Pennsylvania’s publically owned universities.

“Students should visit http://www.pastudentsvoice.org in order to acquire information about the budget cuts which could lead to massive tuition increases,” State APSCUF President, Dr. Steve Hicks said. “We encourage everyone to visit, call, or write the members of the General Assembly as we work our way through the budget process.”

The potentially fatal cuts would reduce the state support for the system to 1983 funding levels. When the State System was created, student tuition accounted for less than one-third of the universities’ budgets, but because of steadily declining state support, tuition revenue now accounts for over two-thirds of the budget.

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Filed under Budget, Rally, Student activism

At least in VT, somebody told the truth about their RIP

Last spring, PASSHE campuses were abuzz over the Retirement Incentive Package that  the system was preparing to offer senior faculty.  APSCUF, while willing to negotiate some kind of package better than the offer we were hearing, understood that the primary impulse was to shed expensive faculty in favor of cheap replacements–on other campuses that are well under the 25% Temporary Faculty cap, they knew this would be yet another excuse to add more temporary faculty.

In this morning’s Chronicle of Higher Education, word from a state college in VT that campus management actually said, out loud, to one of their faculty members that their RIP was designed precisely to save money.  This faculty member says he was pressured to take the deal at the risk of causing other full-time faculty to be fired.  Management on his campus is not being honest now, but my hunch is that this was a rare moment of candor.

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Filed under Budget, Retirement, Retirement incentives

The Philly Inquirer and the Daily Local need to know this

For all of you who already know how much we’ve trimmed, how carefully we’ve reduced, how much we do without in order to meet already-difficult budget demands…

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_727389.html

While largely about Penn State, the writer gives props to PASSHE campuses for our efficiency and budget awareness.

Governor Corbett, other people get it.  When will you?

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Filed under Budget, Tom Corbett