Day 60

Yesterday afternoon, I received an email from a student about an upcoming student meeting on campus. She sent her message to staff advisors asking us to "Please forward to grad student lists. Thanks!" Many of us receive emails like this every day about lectures, calls for papers, etc. since staff are responsible for maintaining current student lists, and it's easiest to reach students through us. We all usually just forward them along and go about our days. However, this message was signed "In solidarity, Graduate Student Organizing Committee" after a few paragraphs lambasting Sacramento and the administration for terrible financial management and dramatically increasing tuition. While I might agree with the group's grievances, it seems to me that something is a little ethically askew about forwarding this message along as if it was any other scholarship opportunity or student appreciation luncheon. I am confused and maybe even a bit offended that this group assumes I and my colleagues would all be willing to use official university email lists to help students protest against the institution that provides those email lists. Go put posters up, find student emails on the public directory, even stop me in the hall and ask for a favor, but to use official university channels just seems out of touch.  In an article in the Chronicle titled "Is it My Job to Teach the Revolution?" a student services director at Dartmouth recounts having to tell a student who had come to her for advice about occupying the administration building that the student probably shouldn't tell her about those plans since she herself is part of said administration. Two deans who witness the subsequent dainty (my word) student protest against the administration are quoted at the end of the article as saying, "These kids don't know how to do this...In my day, we knew how to pull off a demonstration."

Furlough paycheck number two arrived in its virtual form in my checking account today. For the sake of dramatic impact, I compared my gross earnings from when I first started to my take-home pay now, just to see how much I am giving up in taxes, benefits, and furlough. The difference made me nearly faint. I do not recommend ever doing this with your own paycheck unless you have handy an EMT with a defibrillator. In honor of Halloween, if I really wanted to go for a good shock, I could also add in the amount of money the university pays for my benefits to make a really big ugly number far larger than double what I take home. But I am, instead, going to step away from the computer...