In my March 29th post, “On Group Think and Catastrophe,” I reproduced a very pointed argument made at our local APSCUF-KU Meet and Discuss table made by former APSCUF-KU Vice President, Ken Ehrensal.  His argument called out KU Administration budget officials’ problematic use of “worst-case-scenario” logic, in particular, the logic of a budget catastrophe.  Here is an exert from that post:

Second, Ehrensal argued that the budget presentations given by Ken Long, Assistant VP of Administration and Finance, assume every catastrophic scenario.  For example, KU’s budget projections assume a 2.5% annual increase in tuition.  However, the Chancellor has been talking about a 4% increase.  If the Chancellor’s numbers hold, our “budget crisis” will be cut in half.  Long also built-in a 3.5% increase in salary for all union employees (including faculty).  However, all contracts are up for negotiation this year.  New contracts for all university unions will be in place starting July 2011.  If the salary increases are lower than 3.5%, the “budget crisis” could be cut in half (I didn’t write down the percentage that Ehrensal was working with).  Further, Long built-in to h

is analysis that the PA Legislature will not fix the problem with PSERS (PA State Employee Retirement System).  Failure to fix the problem, while possible, is not likely.  In short, the budget presentations represent a catastrophic scenario…not a likely scenario.

Despite our best efforts at the table, the administration continued to use these “catastrophic” budget projections in its presentation to faculty, staff, KU’s Board of Trustees, the Chancellor of PASSHE, and, of course, the media.  Just about every local news story about Kutztown administration’s move to retrench faculty and staff was willing to print the administration’s story of a dire budget crisis without question.  I personally reached out to a few reporters, pointed them to this blog, emailed them, and spoke to them on the phone about the problems with the Kutztown administration’s argument.  But, frankly, the adminstration’s narrative was compelling, especially since it seemed to echo that of the broader “economic crisis” narrative in the U.S. today.  In some ways, I can understand why our arguments, Ehrensal’s arguments in particular, did not gain traction.  It’s not easy to swim against the current of a dominant cultural narrative, especially when that narrative takes the form of a torrential downpour.

But just because a cultural narrative is compelling doesn’t mean that it’s accurate or true.  As a scholar and teacher of rhetoric you are taught to be very critical of cultural narratives that seem to “sweep people up” into them.  Such narratives are the ones that allow governments, businesses, con-men, and cult leaders get masses of people to do things that in “normal” times they would never do.

Well, that’s where we are folks.  KU’s administration has used the “catastrophe” narrative to cut jobs, removed fired administrators and staff from their offices with police escorts, reorganize programs, eliminate majors, all under the cover of media reports that reaffirmed what many people feared: “there’s nothing we can do.”  Well, the narrative hasn’t held.  As a matter of fact, in turned out that Ehrensal underestimated the degree to which KU’s administration was padding its numbers in order to create the appearance of crisis.  Here’s and article from yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

Pa. system approves 4.5% hike in college tuition

Undergraduate tuition at Pennsylvania’s state-owned colleges will increase $250, or 4.5 percent, under a $1.5 billion budget approved Thursday by the system’s board of governors.

Annual tuition for full-time resident undergraduates beginning this fall will be $5,804, which the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education said was the lowest among all four-year colleges and universities in the state. The system said it would receive $503.4 million in state and federal funding to support the current-year operating budget.

Resident graduate school tuition in 2010-11 will be $6,966, an increase of $300. Nonresident graduate tuition will increase $480, to $11,146. - Inquirer staff

You with me here?  Recall Ehrensal’s argument:

For example, KU’s budget projections assume a 2.5% annual increase in tuition.  However, the Chancellor has been talking about a 4% increase.  If the Chancellor’s numbers hold, our “budget crisis” will be cut in half.

Put simply, KU’s “budget crisis” has just been trimmed over 50% without a single faculty member losing her or his job, no program consolidation, no outsourcing of vehicles (yes, KU is now outsourcing to Enterprise Rent-a-Car at a cost of $41 a day.  I have heard, but haven’t yet confirmed that this is a PASSHE initiative).  So, there’s half your budget crisis.  It also looks like the PA Legislature is going to resolve the “crisis” in PSERS.  That “crisis” was supposedly going to put KU back by around $6 million.  Assuming that crisis have been averted, as predicted by Ehrensal, that cuts the “crisis” back even further.  You still following?

What this basically means is that KU’s administration and the administration at other PASSHE universities are not simply carrying out German-style austerity measures.  They are restructuring the State University system under the cover of the “budget crisis.”  As if citizens of the Commonwealth haven’t already experienced more than their share of “belt-tightening.”  Now, KU’s administration is given us all a spooky story right before bed in order to decrease citizens access to higher eduction–the very thing we’re told that is required to lift us out of this downturn.  Unjust desserts for the majority once again.

As the fall semester quickly approaches and more PASSHE universities have announced plans to retrench over the summer, it is going to become increasingly necessary to continually ask the question: what’s the plan?

As several faculty members at Kutztown have pointed out, the administration’s retrenchment moves have seem haphazard at best.  The only organizing principle for their decision to close the Nursing program, for example, seems to have been made by rather crude accounting that the program was not currently “making money” for the university.  Yet, it would be wise for all of us  to place these “local” decisions into a a broader context.  Take, for example, this article from yesterday’s GantDaily.com.  The article discusses a recent report, “Offshorability of Pennsylvania Jobs,” issued by Penn State’s Workforce Education and Development Initiative:  Here’s a link to the article:

Penn State Experts: PA is More Susceptible to Job Offshoring | GantDaily.com.

The report points out that Pennsylvania jobs are more susceptible to offshoring compared to the rest of the nation.  That is because that many of the jobs–most of the jobs in some areas of the Commonwealth, actually–are in jobs that are considered high risk for offshoring.  What are some of the jobs that are NOT as susceptible to offshoring?  If you guessed health care jobs–in particular nursing–you’d be on the right track.

And yet, Kutztown chose to cut the nursing program.

The administration’s decisions have shown a persistent pattern of making decisions based upon short-term thinking, immediate cost-cutting, or what the magic 8-ball said.  Pennsylvanians deserve more than being treated like a number in an accountant’s ledger.  We need to demand that those people tasked with “managing” our educational lives (and lives in general!), plan for our future, not simply look for ways to wield their hatchets.  In the case of PASSHE, this means university administrations, university Boards of Trustees, the Chancellor and his staff, the PASSHE Board of Governors, our State Legislators, and the Governor (current and future).

So, if the plan involves only a hatchet with little consideration of long term planning, then maybe it’s time to “offshore” the administration and our State legislators to give all of us and our families a chance to live our lives with dignity and hope.

Earlier this evening I received the official list of academic program action recommended from the Chancellor’s office to the PASSHE Board of Governors from our State Meet and Discuss Chair, Mark Cloud.  In his email, Mark indicated that “discussion of these program changes will be this Thursday, 9am during the Academic and Student Affairs Committee session in Harrisburg.”  He also indicated that Ken Mash will be addressing the BOG on behalf of APSCUF and that some faculty members will be present as well.

I wanted to share this list so that we can all get broader picture of what is happening system wide and to situate the reorganization at Kutztown with what looks like a broader PASSHE reorganization.  For example, Medical Technology has been placed in moratorium while at the same time the Medical Technology program at Bloomsburg has been reorganized as a BS in Health Sciences with Clinical Lab/Med Tech as a concentration.  While this information doesn’t by itself mean something, it does provide a useful starting point for critical inquiry.

Here is a copy of the document:

BOG Acad Program Actions July 2010

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been spending time with my family, refinishing my deck (for which the weather has NOT cooperated), doing house repairs, and, basically, reflecting upon this past year as I prepare to enter my 8th year at Kutztown.  I have to admit that this past year has taken a significant toll on me, in particular, my notorious deep reserves of hope.  In my post back in the end of June, I was poking away at some of reasons for this:

While the tendency to criticize an issue and wait for “someone else” to take up the labor is certainly not limited to Kutztown University, I have always been part of groups at other institutions who had a kind of DIY ethic.  That is, I’ve generally been surrounded by people who, when faced with a problem, tended to immediately begin to generate creative solutions without waiting to be given permission.  In those contexts, we always felt a sense of ownership of the issue–and a kind of core belief that “if you want to get something done, you’ve got to do it yourself.”…

…What’s amazing about that DIY ethic is that it is hopeful–a basic belief in the creative labor of self-organizing groups–affinity groups, if you will.  While our frustrations were deep, we tended to gravitate toward possibilities–whether those possibilities included putting on shows, carrying out “guerrilla art” campaigns, building shanty towns on university campuses, occupying administration buildings, living collectively, or starting our own independent zines and newspapers.  And we did these things.  They weren’t just ideas.  Wecreated and built and produced.

This past weekend I was at a Writing Program Administration conference in Philly and met up with some friends and their kids.  It was the first time that my friends and their families met my son, Rowan.  These were some of the friends I had in mind when I wrote that post.  I told them about some of my frustrations about Kutztown–in particular issues with my union work.  I have to admit that it was somewhat comforting to hear that I was not alone in my frustrations of doing organizing work in academic institutions.  One of my friends talked about her frustration with academics who all have great ideas, but are unwilling to do the work of organization to make those ideas concrete. One of my other friends talked about how important it was to take a leave just to reevaluate one’s relationship to her academic institution.  I shared stories about moments of opportunity amidst “crisis” in which faculty had a chance to take the initiative and reconstitute their working conditions, but chose, instead, to play the role of victim/critic (I think these two terms can operate too frequently as a debilitating binary).

Earlier last week, I met up with one of my oldest friends and his family who live in Northern Ireland.  They were back in Central New York visiting family, so we headed up for a one day visit.  He and I got on a similar conversation…or, I should say, I got us on to a similar conversation.  We were talking about how the political work we did back in Syracuse was not only engaging, it was FUN.  That’s right, FUN.  We enjoyed the work of political organizing and our community was strengthened by such work.  Why was it then, I asked, that this relationship is so absent at KU?  He shrugged his shoulders as did I.  ”Beats me,” we both seemed to say.

All of these questions came back to me front and center upon my lukewarm return to work and preparation for the coming semester. I read through a chain of emails posted on the faculty listserv doing some bashing of our union leadership.   Some of the issues raised in these emails are not without merit–especially when it comes to communications processes over the summer.  It is true, as one faculty member wrote in regard to significant organizational changes being pursued by KU’s administration, that the union should provide members with a “continuing update” about what is going on (while, at the same time, questioning whether or not the union leadership is doing anything at all).

Point taken.  There is no doubt that it’s been a challenge keeping updates coming, especially over the summer when not all members of our Executive Committee are one campus everyday as they would be during the academic year.  And yet I think most of us on our Executive Committee would agree that there needs to be better communication networks over all.  That is true for ALL aspects of our union’s work.

What becomes a bit disenchanting for me is that on several occasions I’ve asked some of the same people who are so pissed off now to help with some of the work.  In response to personal emails providing sketches of analyses and rhetorical questions, I’ve asked people to step up and contribute–not as some kind of challenge, but because we genuinely need more members with expertise in particular areas to help combat the administration’s moves to retrench faculty and eliminate or change programs. That doesn’t seem unreasonable.  But, more often than not I receive, instead, a host of reasons why they are unable to do that work.  I’ll never understand why there is always more than enough time to write lengthy emails filled with detailed criticisms, but always insufficient time to contribute to building a stronger union.  But, this is where we are.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am the last person who will sit here and tell you that our local or statewide union is above criticism.  In many ways, I might surprise many people in our union with the sharpness of my own critiques.  However, my approach as been to look for ways to get involved and change things.  It’s that’s old DIY principle again: If you don’t like something, doing something about it by doing the work to fix it.

Despite the temptations, I’ve consciously tried to avoid engaging in personal critiques or fanning the factional flames in public forums that can potentially weaken our union. But as the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year approaches–a contract negotiation year to boot–I think it’s necessary for “new ideas” and “criticisms” to be accompanied by a willingness to do the work to either make those ideas concrete or correct problems.  Maybe this is just too much to ask for.  We shall see.

Anyway, I’ve got more to say on a couple of other things, but I’ll do so in separate posts so as not to extend this already-too-long post further.

Since my most recent post to the XChange containing the independent auditor’s report for KU for the year ending 2009, several people have gotten in touch with me asking if I posted this report because it was some kind of “smoking gun.”  The short answer to this question is “no.”  The more nuanced answer is, “but it might be.”  That is to say, I put these documents out because I think it’s better to have multiple eyes on them.  The more information we can put in members’ hands, the better.

Case in point: I received and email from an Accounting Professor at another PASSHE university who is doing a cross-institutional analysis of the accounting practices of different PASSHE universities.  The faculty member expects to present the findings at the Second Annual APSCUF/PSEA Conference on Labor in Higher Education this fall in Harrisburg.  As a side note, I can’t thank former APSCUF Vice President, Amy Walters, for getting this conference off the ground.  The conference encourages this kind of labor scholarship–scholarship that is immediately useful in our current struggles.  Bravo.

Access to this information is even more critical since there is VERY contradictory information out there regarding Kutztown’s and PASSHE’s “budget crisis.”  You may recall posts on the XChange earlier this year on some of the “budget crisis myths” being offered up by KU’s administration, KU’s questionable use of breakage funds, and PASSHE’s contradictory claims about the “crisis.”

The latest bit of info that points to serious contradictions in both KU’s and PASSHE’s claims about their budget crisis comes from the world of bond ratings.  Yesterday, Fitch.com released bond rating numbers for PASSHE: Fitch determined that

In addition, Fitch affirms the ‘AA’ rating on PASSHE’s $825.3 million of outstanding revenue bonds.

The Rating Outlook is Stable.

That’s nice to know.  You might also be interested in this little nugget:

Generally stable operating performance has allowed PASSHE to maintain an adequate liquidity cushion. Available funds of $958 million at the end of fiscal 2009 covered over half (53.7%) of operating expenses for that year and 103.1% of total pro forma system debt. Unlike many colleges and universities, PASSHE’s conservatively invested financial cushion increased during fiscal 2009, despite the global financial market turbulence.

Once again, there is a serious gap between the claims being made by the local and state administrations and what independent analyses suggest.  [click here to check out Fitch's full report].

OK, I’ve got to run off and do the next round of English placement for incoming students.  Can’t wait to hear your thoughts.

Well, someone’s been slipping documents under my door again.  Yup.  I was on campus last Friday doing English Placement for incoming students and arrived back on campus this morning around 10am for the same reason.  This morning I arrived in my office to find another document had fallen out of the air onto my desk.  This time, it’s the Independent Auditor’s Report for the year ending June 30, 2009.

I have to walk across campus in a few minutes to continue English Placement for incoming students and I’ve only had about 20 minutes to scan the document. I am not sure exactly what it will tell us, but I thought it better to have as many eyes on the document as possible.  So, without out further delay, here is the report:

KU Independent Audit Report: Year Ending June 2009

I found this article to be quite interesting give the long-standing and on-going attempts by faculty at KU to get a bullying policy passed.

Workplace Mediators Seek a Role in Taming Faculty Bullies – Faculty – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Here is an EXCELLENT op-ed recently published in the Morning Call, written by one of KU’s Nursing Faculty, Ilene Prokup.  This is PRECISELY what more faculty and students need to be doing in response to all the budget cuts.

Ilene Prokup — Kutztown must fully explain closing of nursing program – mcall.com.

Get your minds out of the gutter folks…The “Dirty” here is as in “getting your hands dirty.”  I’ve been a little lax keeping up with Cooking with Dionysus.  Much of my virtual presence has been spent working on a blog for our local union’s delegates to the APSCUF Legislative Assembly, a non-official local union blog called APSCUF-KU XChange (of which I’m thinking of changing to just the KU XChange), and building a wiki for our composition and rhetoric program at KU.  I’ve also been writing quite a bit on private writing blog.  For a host of reasons, I write more and more often in that blog than I do when I plop myself down in front of a blank Word document.

I began my private blog as a way to finish up a chapter for Seth and JongHwa’s forthcoming  collection, Activism and Rhetoric: Theory and Contexts for Political Engagement.  In short, I liked writing and thinking in a blog space a lot more than I did in a Word context.  From there I began writing class notes and ideas for my course, “Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy” (which I am currently teaching), and seemingly random notes about issues I’m interested in and want to research.  The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write (a pretty consistent theme in my academic career).

Like everything else at a teaching university, my desire to write more and more often had to confront very real time constraints.  So, I scheduled myself a three-hour bloc once a week to write.

One of the first things I did was re-read all of the conference papers I’ve written over the past few years to see which ones (if any) I could work on and turn into an article.  As I read, it started to see the shape of a bigger project.  I shouldn’t have been surprised, actually, since I made a conscious decision a while back that I would only propose conference papers that chipped away at a bigger project.  After a few days of toying around with organization and, more importantly, the title I had the outlines of a book proposal together: Gettin’ Dirty: Rhetoric, Democracy, and Sustainable Dissent.  Yup.  So, that’s what I’m working on!

So…why this breaking out of my private blog into Cooking with Dionysus?  I refuse to admit this to myself, but I am sure it has something to with watching Julie and Julia the other night.  I’ve gone back and forth on bringing my works-in-progress to CwD (or any other blog for that matter) for a range of reasons…that I’d be happy to talk about.  What convinced me to move Gettin’ Dirty (the draft proposal at least) onto CwD?  Two things: 1) I need to give myself smaller deadlines and a consistent space to write in order to put this book together in a relatively short period of time (self-imposed urgency); and, 2) to open up the possibility of not feeling like I’m working in isolation.  Even if no one bothers to comment to what I post, it feels less isolating.  To me.  No general principles about the nature of blogging and it’s impact on writer identity here.  Just a fact that it seems easier to write.

As my first little nugget, I thought I’d post my very, very drafty table of contents.  This is what I am working with:

Gettin’ Dirty:
Rhetoric, Democracy, and Sustainable Dissent
by Kevin Mahoney

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: “Rhetoric of Advocacy: Curricular Labor and Democratic Futures” (from CCCC 2009 conference paper) [Potentially retitled as “Curricular Labor and Democratic Futures.”]
2. Radical Teaching and Social Movements: Historical Legacies (from chapter 3 of my dissertation)
3. “Space: Mapping Democratic Openings in Empire” (From CCCC 2004 conference paper)
4. “Advancing Composition: Public Rhetorics and the Struggle for Democratic Futures” (From CCCC 2007 conference paper)
5. “Viral Advocacy” (from CCCC 2010 conference paper)
6. “Literacies for the Long Haul: Traditions of Radical Literacy Education for Access, Autonomy, and Democracy” (from CCCC 2005 conference paper)
7. “The Day After: Grieving and Sustainable Dissent” (new)

So, there ya have it…my little entry into public, academic writing.  Oh, if you’re wondering about the picture at the top of this post, I found it online.  I love it.  I want to ask permission to use that as the cover.

I’ve got some ideas already about where to submit my proposal…but if you’ve got any ideas, I’m all ears.

2010.  Wow.

I can’t think of a decade that went by faster than this past one.  I’ve spent 7 1/2 years of the ’00′s in Pennsylvania.  That means that I have lived here longer than DC (3years), Oxford, OH (4 years), and almost as long as I lived in Syracuse (8 years).  Pretty wild.  And…what’s really got me thinking…of my 7 1/2 years at Kutztown University, I’ve been the coordinator of composition for all but two of those years.  That’s right…I’m one of those people who took on the reigns of writing program administration well before I was tenured.  I’ve been a tenured coordinator of composition for only a year and half.   Believe me, I was told all during grad school that taking on WPA duties before tenure was a bad idea.  Practitioners in our field also recommend strongly against it.  But, at the time it didn’t feel like there was too much choice if I was going to be able to help build our composition program–one of the key reasons I came to KU.

At the end of my second year, ten faculty in our department retired; one tenure-track faculty member got married and joined her husband on the West Coast; and, our then Chair decided to tell us during finals week that he had accepted a new job and would not be with us the following fall.  He even passed around pictures of his new house in Michigan.  I remember that moment as both daunting and exciting.  Daunting in that our faculty was gutted by almost a third and we had to scramble to elect and new chair and figure out how to staff all of our courses by the fall semester.  Exciting because many of those people who were retiring were the very faculty members who seemed committed to internal factionalism and personal conflict.  In one fell swoop, that dysfunctional departmental dynamic would be gone for the most part.  We had the opportunity to build a new, collaborative department.

Our coordinator of composition at the time decided to run for department chair.  She and I had talked about me taking over the coordinator position, but this would mean I would do so a year ahead of time.  I didn’t see any real alternatives, no matter how conflicted I was about my premature entry into the world of writing program administration. I can’t pretend that my first couple of years at the coordinator were easy.  It was a huge adjustment that was marked by my own, at times, ambivalent relationship to administrative work.  But, in looking back on these 5 1/2 years, I think I can say that I’ve been able to do some pretty good things here.

I think my biggest contribution has been to privilege growing the program.  This has meant: 1) prioritizing building a core faculty in composition and rhetoric; 2) cultivate intellectual spaces to support that core faculty and all faculty teaching composition; and 3) build an undergraduate (and eventually graduate) concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies (the name came later, actually). Since I took over in 2004, we’ve hired three new faculty in composition and rhetoric and we are in the middle of hiring our fourth.  We’ve also converted a temporary faculty member–who is completing her PhD in composition and rhetoric–to a tenure-track position.  So, by fall 2010 we will have increased the number of comp/rhet faculty from three to eight.  Not bad.

In terms of creating an intellectual space, I started a reading group in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies that meets monthly to discuss current scholarship in the field.  Thanks to the great work of Amy Lynch-Biniek and the Composition Conference Committee, we’ve expanded our annual undergraduate composition conference to include students taking composition and rhetoric courses at all levels.  We’ve also brought in keynote speakers such at Keith Gilyard, Rosa Eberly, and Steve Parks–and this spring Susan Wells will be joining us.

We have also revised and added several new courses to the department’s offerings.  In my first year as coordinator, we added ENG 430 “Rhetorical Traditions/Contemporary Renditions.”  Last year, we added my course ENG 316 “Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy.”  And this past semester, we added ENG 260 “Issues in Composition and Rhetoric” (Lynch-Biniek) and ENG 274 “Women, Writing, and Rhetoric” (Cullum).  Linda Cullum also worked with Lisa Weckerle from Speech/Communications to update ENG/SPE 335 “Rhetoric of Literature.”  Thanks in large part to our Chair (and fellow compositionist) Janice Chernekoff, ENU 405 “Teaching of Writing” runs every semester and is a required course for all Secondary Education/English majors.  All of these new courses are part of our proposed concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies, which I expect to have cleared all the curricular hurdles by the end of spring 2010 semester.  It’s really been quite an amazing run so far.

Like anything else, I could also list the many things I wish I had done, done better, or didn’t do.  But, I’m pretty good at beating myself up about those things on a daily basis.  In the spirit of the New Year, I thought I’d cut myself a little slack, look back at some accomplishments, and remind myself that the work is worth it.  Now I can actually begin planning for the next step!

Hmmmmm….where can we go from here?