From galya@u.washington.edu Thu Mar 2 11:39:06 PST 1995 >From galya@u.washington.edu Thu Mar 2 11:39:06 1995 Return-Path: Received: from carson-oms2.u.washington.edu by lists.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.02/UW-NDC Revision: 2.32 ) id AA20095; Thu, 2 Mar 95 11:39:06 -0800 Received: from carson.u.washington.edu by carson-oms2.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.02/UW-NDC Revision: 2.32 ) id AA12574; Thu, 2 Mar 95 11:39:05 -0800 Date: Thu, 2 Mar 1995 11:39:04 -0800 (PST) From: Galya Diment To: slavic-uw@u.washington.edu Cc: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Hearing and after In-Reply-To: Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Bill, Thanks for your thoughts -- and thanks for addressing the committee yesterday. They looked quite impressed by the fact that you are from the East Coast, held a high national office, and came to our support. I also felt that one of the most idiotic statements made yesterday was the recommendation to save everyone if the department is eliminated. While I am glad that they have strong feelings about us all, tenured, untenured, lecturers, or staff, the silliness of the idea that you can eliminate the department, cause faculty, students and staff lots of grief regardless of whether they are retained or not, have a huge impact on this campus, this state, and this region, and yet not even save a PENNY in the whole transaction, makes it even more of a bad joke. And yet, I cannot guarantee that THIS administration is not capable of doing something like that... As to moving people to other departments, no matter how "valuable" we may be, we should not fool ourselves. There will be bad blood: we will obviously be imposed on those departments and take place of the new vacancies they would much rather fill with people of their own choice. Promotions to Associate (if our untenured faculty is saved) or Full Professors will also be more difficult since most of us inhabit a different universe from most people in Comp . Lit. or Linguistics. Dick Dunn once told us that they want us to be happy and therefore we can choose where we'll end up. I decided then that I'll go to the School of Engineering or Medical School so that I can at least be making lots of money. That I am incompetent to teach there should surely be not MY problem! GD. On Thu, 2 Mar 1995, Bill Derbyshire wrote: > Hi Galya! > > I found the hearing fascinating yesterday, and I left with lots of > conflicting emotions. At Rutgers University, which is also a state > university, the budget cuts have had a devastating impact in the last > several years. More than $100 million dollars have been lost from the base > operating budget. You can hardly imagine what the atmosphere at that > university is like these days. The faculty is in a very sour mood, and > everyone fights over pennies. Even now, however, the university prefers to > slash departmental budgets more or less equally, although there has been > an increasing demand to eliminate departments and chop 'weaker' programs. > The latter was attempted twice, once with speech pathology and once with > Comparative Literative. The former succeeded because it was a tiny program, > and there was no one to come to its defense. The Comp. Lit. initiative > ultimately failed because of a massive outcry of support. Conditions at > Rutgers, however, are quite different than at UW. At Rutgers the AAUP > plays the role of union and it gave very strong support to Comp. Lit. > Be that as it may, even in its horrible budgetary crisis, > Rutgers continued to develop new programs and create new departments > and programs in a rational way, which brings me to my main point: > I was quite disturbed yesterday at the talk of what would happen > if the Slavic Dept. is eliminated, specifically the probability of moving > faculty members into other departments. This is extremely problematic from > my point of view. Should the worst happen, people will wind up being > forced off onto other departments where they may ultimately be not very > welcome, and at best tolerated. What chance would an untenured faculty > member have in, let's say Linguistics, when their area of specialization > doesn't really match the long term development plans of that department? > Still more importantly, however, and again I rely on my Rutgers > experience, if the recommendations of the committee to save the course > offerings and ALL faculty members (if the department as such is > abolished), then where the hell are the savings? As I understand Karl has > done a magnificent job in streamlining offerings. So the courses will be > taught, faculty will survive, support services will still be needed, > someone will have to be given release time to oversee the scheduling of > faculty and courses, no matter what department they wind up in, etc., etc. > This was the thinking at Rutgers. Merging disciplines results in few if > any savings, thus new programs continued to emerge even in the worst of > times. > Don't know if any of the above is useful, but I wanted to let you > know of my recent experiences. It seems to me that UW has really only two > choices: leave things as they are or call forth a state of emergency and > fire everybody (I hope no one from the administration is reading this > letter!). Even if the administration has considered this last possibility, > it is highly unlikely that they could get away with such a drastic step. > By the way, yesterday's Chair did drop a side comment that this is NOT a > true financial emergency (did I hear him right?) - if not, and if the > university tried to cancel a program AND faculty lines, the national AAUP > would certainly have plenty to say about it. > OK, enough rambling on my part. I just think that this whole > situation is so problematic in terms of implementation that UW will have > to back off. Hope I'm right. > Bill Derbyshire > > .