4/13/2013. I made a mistake, and I want to correct the record and try to make amends.
I’ve been claiming UO’s Randy Geller has been paying Sharon Rudnick $400 an hour to run the administration’s negotiations with the faculty union. This was based on documents her HLGR firm gave Marion County Judge Thomas Hart, when they and Randy Geller were trying to get him to agree to double-charge the DOJ for Frohnmayer and Gary’s public records case over the consulting deal for Kitzhaber’s girlfriend. Long story, Pulitzer Prize winner Nigel Jaquiss had a piece about it in Willamette Week, here:
and
But in the latest UO invoices Rudnick’s rate is given as only about $300 an hour. (Frohnmayer and Gary’s rates are only $260 and $295 respectively, instead of the $550 and $450 they charged the DOJ, and got the Deschutes County taxpayers to pay them for their unsuccessful ethics complaint against DA Patrick Flaherty.)
Let’s assume that $400 really is Rudnick’s regular rate. Maybe she’s giving UO a discount because she enjoys the bargaining sessions as much as I do. Or maybe she just has a big heart, and feels that trimming a few % off the faculty raises is a public service that might help with the karma from her tobacco company work?
But it’s probably better not to dwell on her motives. $100 is a lot of money when you multiply it by all those billable hours. And UO certainly needs the cash to build up its reserves. We should all be grateful to her, and I’ve been trying to think of some way to reciprocate.
Ms Rudnick visibly and audibly lost it in the bargaining session when the union proposed calling her side “the administration”. The AAUP’s Mike Mauer then suggested using “the university administration” instead. While I’m sure Mauer’s intentions were friendly, if anything she now gets even angrier whenever she hears that phrase. I’m no behavioral economist, but I don’t think these outbursts are strategic. They can’t be good for building a reputation as a level-headed professional negotiator. And now the UO Senate has joined the nomenclature war, on the faculty union’s side.
A little set theory implies that the word “administration” is her trigger. So help me make peace between Rudnick and Mauer. Anyone have a good synonym for “administration” to suggest? I’ll make up new buttons, and give one to the reader with the best idea.
highly paid temps? that’s about all they add up to around here.
The more pejorative term would be “carpetbagger”.
How does uomatters know what the hourly rate is from these bills? The hours/times are all redacted. Many consultants charge in 10/15 increments.
Scratch the comment above. I now see that the rates appear on page 6 of the “dump”.
Cylons.
This suggestion is not meant to disparage UO’s many good administrators. Just the toasters.
“Pinstriped cookie-pushers” has been a classic name for a pampered, useless class. However, the attire of university administrators tends to be less formal, so maybe “tweed-jacketed bean counters”?
In a meeting of the Emeriti Committee, Frank Stahl suggested to a former Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs that “Hired Help” was an appropriate descriptor.
Feeding us a shit-pie. Yummy!
Artisanal Beemerati
Below the ranks of the Beemer crowd, there are a lot of rank and file Officers of Administration who do yeoman’s work keeping things running for modest pay. Maybe Sharon has as much contempt for them as she does for faculty?
You bet she does. It’s a prerequisite for being an administrator. It’s why we had to get rid of the anti-university influence of Richard Lariviere.
Of course, but they are still ‘administration’, no? And glad to be such when issues go well. Maybe uomatters should delineate between the Beemers and the Beemer-wannabees.
How about overlords…
I think the usual terms in union negotiations are “labor” and “management”. Now you just have to figure out which group gets which label.
Comment of the week, obviously. The union should propose to play rock-paper-scissors with Gleason for this. I’ll bring some dice for Moffitt to roll for the raises. We can finish in one session and celebrate down at Three Rivers.
In the book The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University, Benjamin Ginsberg seems taken with the terms “deanlet” and “deanling”. Taking off from those, perhaps:
Im-provost-ers
Management
The Bureacracy
Capital (if we wanted to get Marxist)