'Til they got a hold of me.
I opened doors for little old ladies,
I helped the blind to see.
I got no friends 'cause they read the papers.
They can't be seen, with me and I'm gettin' real shot down
And I'm feeling mean.
No more Mister Nice Guy
No more Mister Clean
No more Mister Nice Guy
They say, he's sick he's obscene
Gotta love 70s rock--thanks Alice Cooper.
And so for round 2 in Retaliations brought to you by Wayne Watson. Faculty Listen Up.
Watson wants to have control over EVERY aspect of the job gifting at CSU. There is NO ONE any longer, NO ONE he has to worry about checking his authority. The President's Office rules the Board of Trustees as we have seen over the past 2 weeks and Emil Jones rules the president and the governor. This is not a "known secret" any more. It is a full-blown out in the open fascist installation that we have here. Apologists for this megalomania that has reared up in this past week can cry the race card all they want, but any academic worth their salt knows in their heart of hearts that this institution is heading for the dumpster and careening there at breakspeed pace.
Administrative control over Academic matters, job searches (that is the process by which you hire anyone) is now the business of the President's Office. So Criminal Justice was indeed a testing ground after all. What happened there--the administration placing its people with nary a faculty member involved in the decision-making can certainly happen to you now and here's the first volley of incursions. Show me, please show me, what university in the good ole U. S. of A. operates like this? Call your colleagues at normal universities and see how they'd react to this latest assault.
Deans and Chairs and the Provost know this is administrative overreach.
I betcha that Watson's Chief of Staff knows this as well.
There is no restraint on the President's Office any longer.
If your department is doing a job search you are now required to do the following listed below. This is not negotiable according to dictates levelled at the most recent Dean of the Arts and Sciences Chair's Meeting this week. I expect it is what is happening in other colleges.
NEW DIRECTIVES
Is any of this contracturally mandated?
Does any of this contravene HLC regulations regarding university governance?
Jones and Watson and Quin have already violated the idea of an independent Board of Trustees.
Are you outraged enough to join the protest yet?
If not, take yourself over to the Sun Room @5.30p.m. tomorrow for a reception CSU is hosting for none other than the man who keeps CSU in his pocket: Emil Jones. As the Zoroastrians would say, the "Great King," "King of Kings," King of Countries Containing All Kinds of Men," King in this Great Earth Far and Wide."
Aside from saving Dr Watson's *** from a fate worse than a lousy $250,000 (City College after all got him off for $800,000), Emil Jones gave Watson $200,000 from his Foundation to give to the school. Of course, Jones said a few weeks ago that had he known that the Board of Trustees thought Watson violated policies so much so that they wanted to "let him go" he would never have given the money to Watson, er, CSU, right, CSU, it's all about the students. Right, the money was for the students, not Watson, it's all about the students afterall, dammit it is ALL ABOUT THE STUDENTS !!!!
Go to the party if you're not on your Good Friday knees. Kow-tow and kiss rings (or whatever suits your fancy), maybe someday you'll be in with the inner circle too, maybe you'll get your share of Jones' southside pie.
Oh, Corday! That's just how they do things around here. don't cha know?
ReplyDeleteThe old race card defense. . . found this online.
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly is "the race card"? The term usually pops out when a non-white person is accused of "playing" this card (rather than "giving" a greeting card) by claiming that something negative happened because of racism. The accuser in such cases is usually a white person, and the accuser uses the term to express doubt about the validity of the non-white person's claims. A further implication is that playing this card is unfair. The extended metaphor at work here is a card game, and the implications are that racial minorities have an extra card in their hand, that whites don't have such a card, and thus that whites don't play it.
As author and lecturer Tim Wise further explains, white folks have been quick to accuse blacks . . . of playing the race card, as if their conclusions have been reached not because of careful consideration of the facts as they see them, but rather, because of some irrational (even borderline paranoid) tendency to see racism everywhere. So too, discussions over immigration, "terrorist" profiling, and Katrina and its aftermath, often turn on issues of race, and so give rise to the charge that as regards these subjects, people of color are "overreacting" when they allege racism in one or another circumstance.
As I pointed out in an earlier post ("explain away racist incidents"), whites often imply that they know more about what it is to live as a non-white person than non-white people themselves do. Derogatory charges of "playing the race card" are often another instance of this tendency. However, an irony here is that whites have race cards of their own, and they do often play them. Indeed, as Wise goes on to explain in his article, this common white response--the denial of non-white interpretations of reality--is itself the playing of a card, a move that Wise calls the "denial card." To continue with the extended metaphor of a card game, if the first card, played by minorities, is perceived as a "race card," then this white denial card played in response is a race card too (it's one of several common instances of "white denial" that Wise describes).
Actually, there are many other circumstances in which whites commonly play a race card. In most cases, though, they don't seem to realize that they're doing so (so really, it's somewhat difficult to blame them for doing so). When they step to the curb of a busy street, for example, and raise a hand to hail a taxi, they expect empty taxis to stop for them. And if any empty taxis don't stop, they rarely if ever think that those taxis didn't stop because of their own skin color. But such is not the case, of course, for those who wear, say, black skin. As so many who wear it have pointed out, even if their black skin is mostly encased in very expensive, "professional" clothing, it can be difficult to get a taxi to pick them up. When the white passenger steps to the curb and raises her hand, it's as if that hand has a card in it, a card that bears the word "white." The card-playing metaphor could be applied to many other common instances in which white skin invites good service, opens doors, and eases access. Surely, since there are so many ways in which white people hold and play race cards, whether consciously played or not, common usage of the term "to play the race card" should be extended to both its white and non-white players.
Interesting.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about Watson's actions concerning hiring at the departmental level?
As, I have always said. His actions are unprecedented and unwelcome. They violate the tradition of university hiring and completely violate university policy.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete