Monthly Archives: March 2011

by | March 19, 2011 · 7:33 pm

A little fight from the Prez of Slippery Rock

Via the State APSCUF blog:

“We’d like to believe that we have enough influence with 120,000 [PASSHE] students to convince legislators that the governor’s sense of the importance of public higher education is wrong,” he said. “We’re not just going to roll over.”  – Slippery Rock President Robert Smith

I’m not especially surprised by the wide variety of responses issuing from PASSHE presidents, but I have to say I’m especially heartened to hear one who sounds a little feistier than the others I’ve seen/heard so far.

All I can really hope is that, if the PASSHE presidents collaborate on their responses to this nightmare, the energy that President Smith displays here diffuses (not defuses) to the others.  Under the kind of threat Governor Corbett has thrown down at us, a little anger seems entirely appropriate, doesn’t it?

That’s yet another reason it’s important for everybody, at WCU and system-wide, to attend a rally on your campus this Tuesday, Mar 22.  And to write, call, fax, smoke signal, messenger pigeon, whatever it takes–get word to your legislators that you want them to fight for a budget that will keep our system healthy.

 

 

 

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Filed under Budget, PASSHE, Rally, Student activism, Tom Corbett

by | March 19, 2011 · 12:33 pm

West Chester district superintendent responds to budget proposal

This morning, a WCU faculty member with a child in the West Chester Area School District sent me this link, with a letter issued last week by the district’s Superintendent.

I’m posting it on the blog for a couple of reasons.

First, I’m concerned that some members of the WCU community aren’t yet convinced of the gravity of the situation, and I hope that seeing yet another example (with concrete, and large and scary, numbers included) of what this budget will do to education will light the fire under your toes (or wherever it needs to get lit).

Second, I’m concerned that some members of the community believe, for whatever bizarre reason, that the faculty’s (and staff’s, and students’) responses to the proposal are somehow aimed at selfish faculty interests–that somehow the faculty are insidiously pushing a selfish agenda on everyone else as we fight to protect a university system to which we’re deeply committed, and learning conditions for students without which you can’t flourish.  Seeing this letter from the WCASD Superintendent, therefore, is intended to demonstrate that the loud and angry reaction and call for response isn’t ideologically or selfishly motivated.

Go take a good look at what the Governor’s budget will do to our local schools.  And then think about what that means for you–as faculty at WCU, as parents of K-12 students, as WCU students preparing for teaching careers, as anybody who actually cares about the well-being of our state and not just the elite economic interests that paid for your term in the Governor’s mansion.

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Filed under Budget, K-12 Education, Student activism, Tom Corbett

by | March 18, 2011 · 9:54 pm

Links for 3/18

A light day in terms of quantity, but important stuff.  The second article should make us fight harder, not rest on our laurels.  Our efforts, as new as they are, are already starting to make a dent–but they won’t finish the job unless we KEEP PUSHING.

 

Gov. Corbett’s Education Cuts 10 Times Higher in Poor Districts Than Wealthy Ones

I know some of you are less inclined to use a term like “class warfare” than I am, but the data and analysis in this piece make pretty clear that Gov. Corbett has no interest in serving the poor and working classes of this state (if you had any doubts).

If you have kids or family members in school districts that aren’t upper-middle class or higher, you should read this too–see what’s coming down the pike.

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Corbett May Have Lost Some Budget Support

Aside from the assumption that he EVER had support for the kind of drastic proposals he’s made, the most interesting feature of this article is the way it exposes how out of touch Corbett is with his own state.  The usual “I don’t govern by polls” stance rings even more anti-democratic when the numbers are so overwhelmingly in support of the exact institutions (K-12, higher ed) he’s attacking, and in favor of taxing the very wealthy to pay for those institutions.

What’s hard about this, Governor?

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Filed under Budget, K-12 Education, Links, Poll numbers

by | March 18, 2011 · 2:07 pm

WCU’s Mark Rimple responds to Corbett’s budget proposal

On Wednesday, I posted the link to an interview with Corbett’s Budget Director Charles Zogby on Harrisburg radio station WITF.  If you missed it, you can read the article here. 

Our colleague Mark Rimple (College of VPA, APSCUF Corresponding Secretary) responded with a post that’s worth spreading far and wide.  Thank you, Mark, for saying something that needed to be said.  Now it needs to be heard.  Let’s all do our part to make it so. 

Wednesday, 16 March 2011 11:43 posted by Mark RImple

Clearly it’s Zogby and Corbett who have been living under a rock.

As a faculty member in a PASSHE school, I can attest to the continual budget-cutting under our previous governor. The mantra of the last five or more years has been “do more with less”. We have. We are as lean and efficient as it is possible to be, and our education is much more affordable than our private peer institutions.

Posters who like to denigrate the State System Schools have obviously not set foot in one to observe the hard work and dedication of our faculty, staff, and students, and have no idea how much preparation and research we put into our jobs and courses.

It’s pretty easy to speak from the armchair, without actual facts in hand. Just remember you’re flippantly condemning many families (of faculty and parents of students currently in the system) to economic ruin by doing so.

Times have changed, Gov. Corbett, since you went to school, and mostly for the good. Tenure and Promotion in Higher Ed in the good old days were often done largely in the back room, not the rigorous processes of peer review we endure now. Our searches for faculty bring in talent from across the nation and the world, exposing our students to a broad range of thinking and expertise.

Sadly, it’s the price that’s gone up, thanks to a slowly dwindling state appropriation.

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Filed under Budget, Collective Bargaining, PASSHE, Tom Corbett, Tuition increase

by | March 18, 2011 · 12:51 pm

Who Does That Help v. 3?

[This post takes up a thread I’ve been writing about on my personal blog since the January APSCUF Legislative Assembly in Harrisburg.  To see the original post, click here; to see the letter I wrote to Governor Corbett and posted as an Open Letter, click here.]

On March 8, I wrote the above referenced letter to Governor Corbett, asking him to answer a simple question.  If his proposed attacks on, I mean cuts from the PASSHE budget were to pass the Legislature and take effect, who do they actually help?  To date, ten days later, I’ve received no reply and am not the least bit surprised. 

I’m raising that here, on the new APSCUF-WCU blog, because I think it’s a question we should all be asking the Governor, his staff, his office, and any legislator who supports even one penny in cuts to the PASSHE budget–who does it help?  How does it benefit students?  How does it benefit employees?  How does it benefit the communities in which our universities operate?  How does it benefit the schools systems for which we train a sizeable chunk of teachers?  How does it benefit employers in PA if fewer people can go to college?  How does it benefit anybody’s ability to participate in civic/political life, to make informed decisions, to think carefully and talk well, to understand math and science? 

Who benefits from tuition that might have to go up as much as 30% to cover the barebones cost of operating the system? 

How does it benefit taxpayers across the state to see the public university system gutted, which will ultimately lead either to more expenses for all of us, or a shattered economy around the state?  Who benefits from that?

Who benefits from the Governor’s insistence that he won’t tax gas extractions or corporations that do business in PA?  Not the taxpayers who not only continue to pay our own taxes, but to cover for those who don’t pay at all (and I’m not talking about poor people whose incomes don’t produce tax revenues)? 

Who’s benefitting here, Mr. Governor?  The answer to that seems really, really clear to me, and I’m waiting for you to make even a vague attempt to dissuade me. 

We’re waiting…

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Filed under Budget, PASSHE, Tom Corbett, Uncategorized

by | March 17, 2011 · 11:01 pm

Links for 3/17

Links for today! And perhaps a bit more editorializing than usual :).

Poll: Most in PA Oppose Corbett Education Cuts

Thanks to Bill Lalicker for bringing this to my attention; for PASSHE faculty member and APSCUF leader Terry Madonna reports on the results of a poll indicating that huge majorities of Pennsylvanians, including most members of the Assembly, do NOT support Corbett’s proposal.

That, however, does NOT alleviate the need to keep pushing and fighting.  Until our budget is protected, we must keep after it.

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Via Jana Nestlerode:

Tom Corbett’s Proposed Higher Education Cuts Draw Protests

Good coverage including student responses from Penn State and Pitt.  By the way, PASSHE students, this ups the stakes for you.  Gotta get the same kind of press, right?

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Corbett Defends Higher Education Cuts

The Governor points to Penn State’s tuition increases as the explanation for his draconian budget cuts.  It doesn’t seem to occur to him that PASSHE and Penn State are different.  And this guy has the guts to talk about anybody, ever, making an informed decision about anything?

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Budget Proposal Targets the Wrong Special Interests

Editorial from The Mercury (Potttown/Tri-County) does a nice job laying out the social class issues involved in the Governor’s proposal.

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Filed under Budget, Links, PASSHE, Penn State University, Poll numbers, Tom Corbett, University of Pittsburgh

by | March 17, 2011 · 5:34 pm

Poster for Tues 3/22 Rally

With apologies to those you who have already seen this posted on Facebook… 

If you can’t get this version to print well (blurriness, wrong size, what have you), e-mail me and I’ll send it to you in another format. 

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Filed under Budget, PASSHE, Rally, Student activism, Tom Corbett, Tuition increase

by | March 17, 2011 · 2:46 pm

The richest irony I’ve seen in years

Yesterday afternoon, I’m cruising through my work Inbox, trying to pare down the 450 messages to something I can manage, when I notice the invitation below from our Human Resources department.  I can’t even begin to describe how richly ironic the timing of this invitation is.  Within a week of our Governor threatening to slash our universities’ budgets to pieces, prompting all kinds of fears about job loss, increased class sizes, crashed working conditions for those of us who stay, and so on… 

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Subject: Upcoming Faculty/Staff Survey for The Chronicle’s Great Colleges to Work For Program 2011

Our institution is participating in The Chronicle’s Great Colleges to Work For Program 2011, a study designed to recognize institutions that have built great workplaces.

Part of the program involves an employee survey distributed to a random sample of each institution’s full-time Faculty, Administrators and Exempt Professional Staff.  This survey was designed specifically for Higher Education. On March 21, 2011, this survey will be distributed to a random selection of our professional employees. If you are included in this random sample of employees, you will receive an email invitation encouraging you to take part in this survey.

If you receive the invitation, please take a moment to complete the survey.  The results of the survey will be factored into the overall scoring process that will ultimately determine the institutions recognized. After The Chronicle publishes the findings this summer, our institution will receive a report that summarizes responses to the survey questions.

This is a confidential survey that measures the strength of certain organizational competencies and relationships which most directly impact and influence an institution’s culture. Your participation and honest feedback are critical to the assessment process.

To ensure the confidentiality of your responses, your survey will be processed by ModernThink LLC, a research and consulting firm focusing on workplace excellence.  Survey Results provided back to the universities will only be numerical in nature and will not include employee names.

We encourage everyone’s participation! A high response rate helps ensure accurate results and demonstrates the commitment of our workforce.

Thank you in advance for your time.  Please contact the Office of Human Resources at x5653, or visit www.ChronicleGreatColleges.com, if you have any questions.

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Really?  Are you sure this is the time to be asking those questions?  Really?

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Filed under Uncategorized

by | March 17, 2011 · 9:43 am

Paterno knows we need the money more than they do

I prefer to send batches of links out, but this one’s good enough to send on its own.  Reposted from the State APSCUF blog:

From Sunday’s Harrisburg Patriot News: Scott Paterno, son of legendary football coach Joe Paterno, contends that the legislature should take more money away from Penn State than PASSHE because Penn State is better equipped to handle the loss (which is true) and because our PASSHE schools serve a mission in the Commonwealth that Penn State has, well, superceded (in his eyes, and probably right).

 

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Filed under Budget, Penn State University, Tom Corbett, Tuition increase

by | March 16, 2011 · 10:53 pm

Announcement!!!!! PASSHE Statewide Rally, Tues Mar 22

WCU Community Members:

Please spread as far and wide as you can!

West Chester University APSCUF will be hosting a rally on Tuesday, March 22, to encourage the PA legislature to reject Governor Corbett’s Budget and adequately fund the PA State System of Higher Education next year and in the future.  This is part of a statewide effort to hold rallies at all 14 campuses the day before Senate hearings on the Budget begin.
When: Tues, March 22 from 1:15-2;30.
Where: The lawn by the Ehinger Gym, at the corner of Church St and University Ave, behind the bus stop.
All students, faculty and staff are encouraged to participate.
We are expecting media to be there, so it’s important that the turnout is strong.  We need to make a showing to the Governor and the whole state that our universities matter!
Because of the media presence, however, and the presence on campus of a team from the organization responsible for WCU’s academic accreditation, we (respectfully but firmly) ask that you PLEASE be judicious and respectful in your tone and style if you make signs or banners.  The Governor and his supporters don’t need any more fodder to convince voters and legislators of the wrong message.
More announcements and flyers for the rally will soon be sent around campus through multiple outlets.
In Solidarity,
Seth Kahn, APSCUF-WCU

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Filed under Budget, Rally, Student activism, Tom Corbett, Tuition increase