http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/video?id=8028099&syndicate=syndicate§ion=
Thanks to everyone who attended & spoke & helped us get this solid coverage.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
APSCUF rally at WCU: United we stand, underfunded we fail!
Lots to say about today’s rally, too tired to say any of it right now except a very, very serious thanks to everybody who came to the event, spoke, listened, talked, chanted, waved a sign, read a sign, filled out a postcard, or took a factsheet.
I wanted to get this video from the event, produced by Dr. Mike Boyle in Communication Studies, out ASAP.
Excellent work! More to come as we get links to press coverage. WCU-TV was also there, as was somebody from the state APSCUF office.
Filed under APSCUF, Budget, PASSHE, Rally, Student activism, Tom Corbett, Uncategorized, West Chester University
PSEA letters to legislators
PSEA has created a site that will generate a letter to your state representative and senator. You can modify the text to make sure it states clearly your views about the cuts’ impact on PASSHE.
http://capwiz.com/psea/issues/alert/?alertid=32359501
(This is my first post to wordpress, so apologies if it’s messy.)
Cheryl Wanko
Filed under Uncategorized
An excellent op-ed in today’s West Chester Daily Local
I’ll do the usual links page later today, but I wanted to get this column from today’s West Chester Daily Local News out as soon as possible.
It’s an opinion piece contributed by WCU faculty member Dr. Ed Lordan. Dr. Lordan reminds legislators that cutting the WCU/PASSHE budget as a short-term economic fix has serious and dire long-term consequences, while not proving especially helpful in the short-term either.
Some highlights:
Current and future students of the Pennsylvania state schools like West Chester University — those that are part of the PASSHE system — will be particularly hard hit given the sheer amount of funding being cut. There is a direct connection between the health of the university and the health of the local economy — fewer students means fewer dollars for local businesses…
For instance, WCU has been rated a top 100 best value in American public higher education by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance four years in a row. WCU students contributed a record 233,513 hours of volunteer service in the community for the 2009-2010 school year. Cutting funding for them is a short-sighted decision that will ultimately cost more than it saves and have a direct negative impact of current and future students…
Nice work, Dr. Lordan. And thanks for taking the time to write it.
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…
Filed under Budget, PASSHE, Tom Corbett, Uncategorized
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?
Filed under Uncategorized
Links for 3/16, including one “Contact Your Legislator” link
Folks: Sending out today’s links a little early. Eric Hawrelak, the statewide APSCUF mobilization/strike committee chair, just posted this first one on Facebook, and it’s too good not to send now. The others are primarily information, news, and coverage from around the state.
Anything you want posted, send to Seth.
Without further ado…
“Does Your Alma Mater Matter? It Doesn’t to Governor Corbett”
Click here to send messages to Governor Corbett and your local legislators via the PA House Democratic Caucus. Another easy, convenient way to let your representatives know that you want them to FIGHT this.
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Union Estimates 19,000 Teacher Layoff Slips So Far in California
A story about the massive layoffs in CA due to the Republican-led
legislature’s refusal to consider tax increases. Once again, teachers
suffer for the tax breaks for the wealthy.
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National Institute on Money in State Politics
Click here to research contributions to state and local candidates; you can search by race, by position, by district. You can also find out what professions/fields contributors come from and how much they gave.
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[Corbett’s Budget Secretary] Zogby Talks Budget
Clip of a radio spot on WITF. The lead on their website says, “Governor Corbett’s budget has been public for a week now. The spending plan cuts more than a billion dollars out of education spending. WITF’s Scott Detrow sat down with Budget Secretary Charles Zogby at the Capitol. He began the interview by asking Zogby to respond to criticism Corbett could have kept spending in place, if he had raised corporate taxes.”
Our colleague Ken Ehrensal (KU) adds this: On the topic of the cuts to higher education, he justified the cuts by concerns with the effectiveness of the institutions and the “results” that we generate as measured by FOUR (4) year graduation rates. He also made negative comments about higher education’s attempt to “rationalize a 5-6 year graduation rate as the norm.” While he was willing to put some of the blame on the students for not working hard enough and focusing on their studies, he also seemed to lay some blame on the institutions for not making courses available.
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Students, Faculty Express Concerns about Gov’s Proposed Budget
Allentown TV station’s coverage of the open forum at KU yesterday (3/15).
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A Video Introduction to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine
If you’re not familiar with Klein’s book, she lays bare the political strategy of “shock doctrine” (hence the name). If you’re shocked that Gov. Corbett would propose such a drastic cut to the PASSHE budget, watch this video for a good introduction/summary of the strategy behind it.
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Filed under Uncategorized
IMMEDIATE ACTION ITEM
[Via a current WCU student who’s student-teaching, and because this will get broadcast on Facebook, I’m protecting his/her identity]
The Lancaster Journal is hosting a Call-In Poll. Here’s the student’s Facebook post–
“ATTENTION PA TEACHERS, PARENTS, AND FRIENDS:
Please call 1-866-346-7655 to vote on Gov. Corbett’s Budget. Support education and press 4 then # to strongly disapprove of this budget. Your child’s future and quality of education may depend on it! It takes 30 seconds!! I just did it!”
I just did it too; it’s legit. Maybe not the most powerful statement, but a quick and easy one nonetheless.
–Seth
Filed under Uncategorized
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
Filed under Uncategorized
APSCUF-WCU 