Let's Give 'Em Something To Talk About!

Well I have been too busy with my own particular "semester completion strategy" to write anything much this week, but what the heck, it's the weekend now, so as all of us know, we profs. have nothing to do but relax on weekends.

Our own particular top administrators, who all reside on the second floor of the "main" campus, sent an interesting email to us all this week, claiming that our Union agreed to having our picket lines in an area which was clearly dangerous. Without going into the merits of the argument (and there weren't many merits, trust me, given our Local had asked 4 times to have the picket lines removed to a safer location, and given that the college refused 4 times) ... well, never mind! ... Bottom line is that the memo made it even worse.

I cannot understand why someone who is paid almost $250 000 per year plus over $26 000 in taxable benefits does not understand the basics of H/R (Human Resources) 101.

We found it bizarre that the e-mail sent to us was signed by both the president and the vpa but was sent from the email account of one of our H/R people. What does this mean? We are all reading the entrails ... does this mean that they straight-armed this poor person in H/R and made her send it? Or, more likely .. does it mean that neither the president nor the vp/a knows how to use email? or has an email account? or were they worried that they would get so many nasty "reply" emails that they did not want to use their own account? Or maybe they can't type? Or maybe they figured we wouldn't open it if we saw it was from them? (Oh for a return-to-sender button on email!)

At any rate the email was not only offensive to most faculty but also perceived as a feeble attempt to make some sort of lame (albeit cleverly-worded) excuse for their actions. And of course there was no apology for the shabby way we were treated (verbally). It included no "mea culpa" (which might have been something that reasonable faculty could have grudgingly accepted) but instead was a "we did this and here's why we did it" non-rationale. Some H/R professors commented sarcastically after they received this CYA memo ... "ohhhhh ... so I guess everything is ok again now? HAH!" Nobody that I have talked to gives any credence to this after-the-fact pseudo-rationale. So you gotta wonder why it was sent. Might it be to garner support at the Board of Governor's level? I am too tired to go on tonight, but I shall return with more tales tomorrow.