Note: I’ve changed the headline of this post, in an effort to raise the tone of discourse and limit the slow drip of toxicity.
Recent AAU presidents are Bob Berdahl, Hunter Rawlings the IIIrd, and now Mary Sue Coleman.
Berdahl took in $619K as “past president” from this scam prestigious organization of publicly minded research universities:
Hunter III had a few problems filing the IRS return, so I don’t know what his take was:
Calling others burnt out has beens is a very low form of discourse.
And yet at the same time UOM provides actual information about AAU salaries. That’s more than the IHE blurb gives.
Marylin must be new to the UO. That’s about as high a discourse as you’ll ever get from UOM. We read it for the shock value, not for anything else.
Thanks, Just a prof. What, exactly, is it that UOMatters has against Mary Sue Coleman other than that she is/was a senior administrator? It’s an interesting reflection on the nature of our time that many readers of this blog preach about social justice in their classrooms and then sit back without comment while people are systematically targeted for vilification on the blog—many of whom are in the trenches trying to make a difference. These people should not be above criticism, of course, but there’s nothing just or fair about the mean-spirited attacks based on cherry-picked (and often inaccurate) facts that are the norm here. It’s possible to give people the benefit of the doubt and still raise good, hard questions. But that of course would require a generosity of spirit that is increasingly in short supply in today’s world.
I would welcome a healthy and robust discussion of U of O policies. Surely there is vast room for improvement. We all want that. However, the continuous drip of shrill toxicity that I find here is not helpful in moving us in that direction.
Then starting your own blog would be more constructive than tone-policing.
My apologies. Watching the UO administration has not been a job for people with weak stomachs or an aversion to strong language.
We’re all hoping for a turn-around though.
oh come on, its certainly much more than a “drip” and its the nature of virtually all blogs to evolve towards toxicity. Start your own and you will find that out quickly. Call your blog “The Sensible UO” and then try to find some examples …. (have I added to the drip?)
What’s toxic is the behavior of the UO administration and the self-serving institutional culture that’s used to justify it. Any “toxicity” on this blog is a nanoparticle compared to the real, life-altering damage that was very deliberately done to…well, let’s see: Fox, Morlok, Doe, Cleavenger, etc., etc., etc. And that’s just the people who made it into the papers. Lately.
Any tone-policing is essentially a dismissive ad-hominem used to shift the focus from the import of a message to how nice the messenger is being. No one starts out angry–they get that way after repeatedly finding out that “civil discourse” gets ignored.
“Any tone-policing is essentially a dismissive ad-hominem used to shift the focus from the import of a message to how nice the messenger is being. (just different)” This way of thinking is what gets us the kind of dialog on display in the Republican debates. Treat (Obama, fellow candidates, or in the local case, most administrators) as if they are fundamentally evil/ill intentioned, assume the worst, and then resort to name calling. We certainly wouldn’t want critiques of particularly stances to be muddied by an effort to try to understand the context for their actions or the structural circumstances within which they are operating.
You’re underestimating the UO Matters audience. The Republican presidential candidates, on the other hand, are rather cynically not underestimating theirs.