Day 51

This morning, my boss came in to chat with me about some final touches on our department's new website (which will go live tomorrow after a year of work. Hooray!), and I mentioned to her that I had received by somewhat bizarre means a copy of President Yudoff's white paper, "Exploring a New Role for Federal Government in Higher Education." Well she just went off about how he and Berkeley's Chancellor Birgeneau seem to be on a mission to federalize public education, and how her husband's faculty colleagues are in an uproar, and that she talked to some of our faculty who are also in an uproar, and can I believe what they are trying to do to California's public university?, etc. I responded with my own tirade about how Yudoff is a frighteningly powerful man in education right now, and that with the economy in the tank that he could really have a serious influence in Washington advocating for the federal government to get its hands in on the operations of our country's poor starving public state universities, and what will that mean for the future of UC?, etc. We had a great time just getting fired up about the whole thing. Unfortunately, the priorities of the work that needed to be done on the new website took over, and a few moments later, the fun was over and we were forced to retreat to our offices to get to work, which I have been feverishly doing all day. Quotidian details indeed.