Siding Swindle

An unnamed source spoken to ON VASSAR CAMPUS reports that the Townhouses got NEW ALUMINUM SIDING last summer. Thanks President Cappy! We don’t need a writing program, we need middle American comfort and convenience! We need to grill out on the lawn and get fat and happy and complacent, and be able to sleep at night knowing that that bland color of our castle will be just fine thanks to aluminum siding!!!!!

Vassar earns a #12 seed in the South Regional!

The late addition of star quarterback Tim Tebow to the hardwood vaulted the Brewer boys up the whatever-the-hell conference charts! They will face Tennessee on Thursday. Tebow’s lights-out passing and dribbling around in circles game is not to be missed!

(Tebow meets with Balds Adminbot, destroyer of all things creative and writerly)

Misc. News’ servers are down.

Due to heavy internet traffic, Vassar’s student newspaper (www.miscellanynews.com) has crashed.  I think this might be due to some breaking news about Vassar Layoff… stay tuned.

the link is below:

http://bit.ly/xpM1

Vassar Signs Tim Tebow

Might THIS be what Cappy is doing with the savings from the English Department cutbacks? I declare a RUMOR.

Vassar Joins Department Stores, Offering Steep Discounts

Vassar get $25 in Goverment Bailout Plan

Me, Pushing You, Pushing back. Merry Xmas.

Ol' Saint Nicholas

The powers at be have instructed us to lay low, to take it down a notch, to refrain from going to the press (Sara Rimer, we’ll stay in touch).  So far, this ‘exercise‘ has proven that current and former students do care, that the value of professors and the Arts (or the Idea of the Education of Liberal Arts at Vassar) does matter to those who choose to teach within the Vassarian walls and to those who choose to be educated here.  Choices have been made by us all.

We’ve caused quite a stir, enough to prove to faculty, administration, and the public that the answer to the economic problem is not by cutting compensation-costs and eliminating cornerstones of important programs. The answer is obviously more complex–that’s my gut speaking out of line. Nevertheless, we’re currently subjected to the practice that economics drives academia; but this economic pillar is collapsing and we either fall with it or must replace it with something new or old, perhaps the founding ideals of Vassar? After all, we trust Google because up to this point everything they’ve created points back to the promise that it will ‘do no evil.’ Economics explains free-market competition; Darwinian cell-theory explains evolutionary survival–what at Vassar will survive, what is being systematically selected to cease? Either we compete or we work together.

In the end, Vassar is in the hands of a select few whose trust is publicly being judged. I have absolute confidence that democracy is at play, that built into the practice of democracy is the exercise of revolution as a right. What the admin has failed to prepare for is unity–that the Faculty of the English Department have united, that students have united and so have alumae/i. If only All Departments, as a collective voice, would united in cross-disciplinary defense of Liberal Arts, then I think, we come to demonstrate (and near an understanding) what Vassar means. Currently, the admin has been forced to reconsider the details of their plan. It’s their move, and together we wait for it.

For now, a knife is pressed to the skin of somebody and it’s in the admin’s power and interest to make a decision. I have complete faith that the alums, parents, students, and professors will respond accordingly.

Merry Xmas.

“I think I agree with Joyce’s lapsed Catholic hero in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: “What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?” The religious celebration of Christmas is at least a clear and coherent absurdity. The commercial celebration is not even that.”

For Some People, God is Not Enough by Umberto Eco

BELIEVERS PAGE

We’re still looking for more submissions for our “Believers” page, and what better time than over break to write in about our favorite memories of Vassar’s writing program??

DO IT!

Please?…

Lip Service

I was pleased to open my e-mail this morning and find a note from President Hill, only four days after writing a direct message to her. I believe the turnaround on my first e-mail was about six days, so it’s clear that they’re making an effort to respond to our concerns.

“I am sorry not to be able to reply in detail and individually to each of the messages I have received recently concerning academic staffing plans for next year and how those plans affect various academic programs and departments.  Please know that your concerns have been registered and contribute to our understanding and appreciation of the issues.  We continue to develop those plans in consultations with the chairs of departments and programs.”

This “consultation” process sounds great, but it’s glossing over some things. It’s glossing over the fact that adjunct professors who were assured of their “moral tenure” a year ago are now being brushed aside. It’s glossing over the fact that this fight is headed for lawsuits, not “consultation”. This is going to get ugly, and it should get ugly. There is more behind this than we are seeing in the President’s words, and it’s clear that she and the administration are hoping that the alums and the students on campus forget about this over the break.

To those with friends in the media – contact them. Jon and I have contacted a few people who will hopefully be able to bring more publicity to this, but nothing will make that need for publicity more clear than if newspaper reporters are hearing from many, many people. I’ve heard about all the kind e-mails and letters that faculty have received, and we know how moved they have been by our enormous show of support. Now is the time to get this issue in the papers, to apply public pressure to what has been a private campaign so far.

-Austin Murphy ’05

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