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USM Forum -- Message Board -> AAUP-USM MESSAGE BOARD -> Faculty compared to "inmates"
Post Info TOPIC: Faculty compared to "inmates"
Angeline

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Faculty compared to "inmates"
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From the HA Letters:


Faculty wants 'figurehead'

 



This regards the many opinions expressed recently about the USM faculty organizing to select the next president. If the faculty is allowed to pick the next president, USM will never become a world-class university because the president will be nothing more than a figurehead who will be afraid to make even the tiniest of decisions.

This will be due to the fear of offending a faculty that is seeking to keep their working environment as comfortable as possible.

You would not let the inmates pick the next warden, would you?

William Johnson,

Hattiesburg


Originally published February 11, 2005



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Albert

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I think this article is copyrighted. You should probably link to it instead.



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Robert Campbell

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Albert,

You wouldn't have a proprietary interest in this particular letter, would you?

RC

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Albert

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From the bottom of the article:


Copyright ©2004 Hattiesburg American. All rights reserved.



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Albert

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quote:
Originally posted by: Robert Campbell
"Albert, You wouldn't have a proprietary interest in this particular letter, would you? RC"

Oh oh, RC. The Alumni Association must be recruiting letter writers again. Surely nobody would dare to take on the big and bad AAUP by themselves. Surely no student or current faculty member would dare to disagree with you or the almighty AAUP.


 


By the way, what is your interest in this? You do not teach here and you do not even live here. It is easy and nice to cause all of us problems from a distance. Isn't it, RC?



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Advocate

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First off, Albert gives me the willies, so I will ignore him.


Secondly, since when did the faculty say they wanted to select the new president.  The moron who wrote this letter clearly doesn't know how to read.  Oh, maybe someone who uses fat letters to type wrote it.


 



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Sound Advice

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Earlier this week I joined and paid my national AAUP dues online at www.aaup.org. It required only a couple of minutes. Yesterday I mailed a check for my local (AAUP-USM) dues.


I had been an AAUP member elsewhere, but there was no AAUP chapter at USM when I first arrived. Based on past experience, I can tell you for sure that affiliating with AAUP can be one of the best academic investments that a faculty member can ever make. I urge that those who have not yet joined will do so at your earliest convenience.


 



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USM Sympathizer

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quote:
Originally posted by: Albert
"By the way, what is your interest in this? You do not teach here and you do not even live here. It is easy and nice to cause all of us problems from a distance. Isn't it, RC?"
Robert is one of MANY, MANY academics from around the country (and indeed the world) who have been deeply disturbed by the shenanigans of SFT and his gang.  The story would not have been covered many times already in the Chronicle of Higher Education if this were not the case.  Don't forget that the on-line "fire Shelby" petition on the old Fire Shelby board had over 600 signatures, many of them from academics elsewhere.  Shelby threatens not simply the academic integrity of USM, but academic integrity everywhere; if he and people like him succeed, other administrators will follow his example.  Robert has simply been unusually courageous and tenacious in advocating the cause of USM.  If you really cared about academic integrity, you would be thanking him, not chastising him.

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ram

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quote:
Originally posted by: Albert
"  It is easy and nice to cause all of us problems from a distance. Isn't it, RC?"

Like RC is causing the problems?


This is a perpetually weird argument:  you don't live around here, so you ain't got a dog in the fight.  I remember hearing it a lot back in the 60s when the "outside agitators" were alleged to have come down to "stir up trouble." 


I'm just real glad somebody, anybody, anywhere cares enough to do something. Thanks Dr. Campbell.


Sometimes stirring is just what trouble needs.



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Trouble is my middle name

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quote:
Originally posted by: Albert
"By the way, what is your interest in this? You do not teach here and you do not even live here. It is easy and nice to cause all of us problems from a distance. Isn't it, RC?"
Albert, RC is not the only one who neither teaches at USM or lives near USM. I live even further away than does Professor Campell. Do you also consider that I am causing "problems from a distance?" Sorry, kid, but I don't have that much power or influence. You should be made aware that there are knowledgable others where I do live who view the academically indefensible happenings at USM with astronishment. Are they troublemakers? Is everyone who does not agree with you a "troublemaker?"

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Invictus

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quote:
Originally posted by: Albert
"By the way, what is your interest in this? You do not teach here and you do not even live here. It is easy and nice to cause all of us problems from a distance. Isn't it, RC?"


I don't teach at USM & I don't live in Hattiesburg. But I have three (very expensive) pieces of paper that used to hang on my office wall that tell me that I have a a very real interest in the reputation of the University of Southen Mississippi. I don't want to be left holding the bag with three degrees from an unaccredited institution & I don't want to be left with three degrees from a 4th tier tech school.

In fact, I am a third generation alumnus of USM. The first member of my family to attend "the Normal" enrolled before 1920. But I'll tell you this much: Shelby has succeeded in ensuring that I will be the last member of my family to attend USM. I don't want my kid to ever have to worry that some utterly incompetent administrator, appointed by an obviously uncaring board of trustees, will ever threaten the value of her diploma. That's why she's going to Ole Miss. Do I think Ole Miss has better faculty? Nope. Do I think IHL would ever allow Ole Miss to spend as much time in an administratively-induced purgatory as it has USM? Not on your life!

So what's the problem, Albert? If you do teach at USM, then I assume you have a degree from another, accredited institution (unless, of course, you're in the Economic Development "departments"). If the university goes belly-up, it's no sweat off your ass; you can just go to another institution. Unless, of course, you have too much "invested" in the Thames administration...
"Romeo, he said to Juliet, 'You got a poor complexion.
It doesn't give your appearance a very youthful touch.'
Juliet said back to Romeo, 'Why don't you just shove off
If it bothers you so much.'"

"Floater(Too Much To Ask)" by Bob Dylan
Copyright © 2001 Special Rider Music








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Tinctoris

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quote:
Originally posted by: Billy
"You would not let the inmates pick the next warden, would you?"


Interesting perspective. Did we let Billy vote in the last election?

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Distant Observer

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I'm waiting to see whether anybody other than regular faculty members--those supposedly "good, decent" townies who take faculty members' money in their places of business, sit beside them in church, joke with them at civic club meetings, sell them insurance and burial plots, and treat their wounds and heal their diseases--will have the simple decency for once to reply to this letter and object to having their clients and "friends" compared to "inmates." Your biggest obstacle to winning the battle is now and always has been the culpable passivity of the vast majority of "good" people in Hattiesburg. During this entire sordid saga, when Shelboo was ambushing the deans, humiliating G&S, insulting the faculty senate, and trashing every principle of decency and academic integrity there was, have you ever seen ONE letter from a priest or pastor or doctor (Dr. Hartwig excepted) or banker protesting that his/ her parishioners or patients or clients or customers were not incompetents or criminals or in any way deserving of the stupid and brutal treatment to which they had been subjected? When you think about this deafening silence, you have to conclude that Hattiesburg doesn't deserve a good university.


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Spectre of evil

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quote:
Originally posted by: Distant Observer
"I'm waiting to see whether anybody other than regular faculty members--those supposedly "good, decent" townies who take faculty members' money in their places of business, sit beside them in church, joke with them at civic club meetings, sell them insurance and burial plots, and treat their wounds and heal their diseases--will have the simple decency for once to reply to this letter and object to having their clients and "friends" compared to "inmates." Your biggest obstacle to winning the battle is now and always has been the culpable passivity of the vast majority of "good" people in Hattiesburg. During this entire sordid saga, when Shelboo was ambushing the deans, humiliating G&S, insulting the faculty senate, and trashing every principle of decency and academic integrity there was, have you ever seen ONE letter from a priest or pastor or doctor (Dr. Hartwig excepted) or banker protesting that his/ her parishioners or patients or clients or customers were not incompetents or criminals or in any way deserving of the stupid and brutal treatment to which they had been subjected? When you think about this deafening silence, you have to conclude that Hattiesburg doesn't deserve a good university. "
               All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.

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Shot in the dark

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Good women are silent also; many of those are nurses and the realilty grieves me greatly.  I expected such a groundswell from the caring profession, men and women; after all we have the most graduates of any college in the State. And what about those patients who have been cared for, saved, touched by those nurses?  Or those hospitals and agencies who couldn't keep their doors open without our nurses?   I like to think that many of those who appear silent have written many letters and they simply haven't been printed.  Perhaps I am living in my own delusional thinking, but somehow it is the only way I can live with my community.  Otherwise it is hard to imagine that we are toiling away in an institution for a community who cares so little, who would allow us to be treated so inhumanely, even if the community as a whole think we academics are pampered eggheads who live in our own worlds.  However, members of the community both in Hattiesburg and surrounding communities from all strata often tell me that they are very sorry for what we are going through, they don't understand WHY the IHL is allowing this to continue, WHY WE can't do something about it, almost as if the faculty are allowing this to continue, and somehow do not see themselves as being a part of the solution.  If history informs us at all about these kinds of moral conflicts, it is that communities are complex entities capable of unpredictable reactions, disappointing passivity and stunning mass explosions at a moment's notice.  We social scientists are excellent at explaining past community reactions.  That is especially true of the tormented and conflicted south.  So, I too am very disappointed in my community, but am still hopeful enough to think that there could be yet be a reckoning, an awakening, an epiphany.  But then again, I will be glad to comment when this academic apocalypse is over, post reaction; my insights will at that time of course be nothing short of remarkable….



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Iron Lung

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quote:
Originally posted by: Shot in the dark
"Good women are silent also; many of those are nurses and the realilty grieves me greatly.  I expected such a groundswell from the caring profession, men and women; after all we have the most graduates of any college in the State. And what about those patients who have been cared for, saved, touched by those nurses?  Or those hospitals and agencies who couldn't keep their doors open without our nurses?   I like to think that many of those who appear silent have written many letters and they simply haven't been printed.  Perhaps I am living in my own delusional thinking, but somehow it is the only way I can live with my community.  Otherwise it is hard to imagine that we are toiling away in an institution for a community who cares so little, who would allow us to be treated so inhumanely, even if the community as a whole think we academics are pampered eggheads who live in our own worlds.  However, members of the community both in Hattiesburg and surrounding communities from all strata often tell me that they are very sorry for what we are going through, they don't understand WHY the IHL is allowing this to continue, WHY WE can't do something about it, almost as if the faculty are allowing this to continue, and somehow do not see themselves as being a part of the solution.  If history informs us at all about these kinds of moral conflicts, it is that communities are complex entities capable of unpredictable reactions, disappointing passivity and stunning mass explosions at a moment's notice.  We social scientists are excellent at explaining past community reactions.  That is especially true of the tormented and conflicted south.  So, I too am very disappointed in my community, but am still hopeful enough to think that there could be yet be a reckoning, an awakening, an epiphany.  But then again, I will be glad to comment when this academic apocalypse is over, post reaction; my insights will at that time of course be nothing short of remarkable…."
At least one nursing faculty has been very public about her views in this matter.

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