Meredith Hay and Robert Shelton sent out an e-mail today warning us that our jobs are at risk.
Go ahead and panic.
Calling the budget crisis the worst since World War II, we have been asked to sacrifice, to take one for the team, to understand why so many people will likely be fired.
But here's what is going to be hard to swallow: U of A is the second largest employer in Tucson.
This is not just a university issue, but also a city issue and a state issue. Our representatives need to be involved. The solution to this crisis is not to allow the population to become ignorant by providing sub-standard education.
The solution lies in our demanding access to quality public education and calling for accountability in our leaders.
Why hasn't there been a campus-wide initiative for energy saving? Why does the university still spend huge amounts of money on advertising? Why are we still planting and watering seasonal flowers? Why aren't the upper-administrators volunteering to take pay cuts, as they have allegedly asked others to do? Why are we putting more pressure on our already over-stressed GATs rather than helping to support them? Sure, we can eliminate a few deans and merge some departments, but how much money will it cost to merge and how much money will it save in the end? How many times can you merge before you run out of ways to cut corners and it all comes crashing down?
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3 comments:
I think about this one a lot. I mean, think about redesigning letterheads, campus directories, signage, websites, office space, etc. This is going to cost some dough.
Yes, not only are the start-up costs of the transformation not being taken into account, but there is extreme hostility toward the university in Tucson/Arizona, so any/everything we have to say about why major changes can/will affect our ability to be a "world class" institution is seen as elitism and ignored by those we hope will support us outside academia. Things certainly do look bleak.
There is a lot of that hostility reflected in the Tucson Citizen online comments after ever restructuring column. People feel like the university mooches off of the community sometimes. It's important that we show the community what our outreach can do and not lay off more employees than we have to. Laying off working-class secretaries, bookkeepers, janitors, food service people, and other hourly workers certainly does not endear us to this community.
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