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My friend Elena likes to tell a story about grading student papers while some Jacques Cousteau special was playing on the TV as background noise. While she was gawking at what her charges had managed to do to logic, reason, and the English language, Cousteau was commenting on one of the eternal mysteries of the sea. I’m not sure (and I don’t know if Elena remembers) just what bit of maritime biology Cousteau was talking about, but the phrase he used — “No one knows why they do what they do” — rapidly became our standard response to whatever baffling student behavior manifested itself in our classes.

I’m teaching two courses this semester. Both of them are filled to capacity, which means that students who want to get into either of those courses either have to hope for a fortuitously timed drop by someone currently in the class, or they need to ask me for a permission number to get added to the roster. Since registration for spring courses began a couple of months ago, I’ve probably had two dozen queries along these lines. Most of which have been pretty straightforward and easy to handle: the student in question sends me an email, asks about one of my two courses by name, and I tell them I’ve added their name to the relevant waitlist.

But I’ve also had at least half a dozen queries by students whose requests to get into my course ignore “little” details like specifying which course they want to join. At least three queries from students who don’t provide me with their full names (’cause, of course, there’s only going to be one Chris or Elizabeth or John who might show up in my classroom (either of them) on Day One). And at least two queries from students expressing a strong and profound interest in taking my course . . . in an email that’s actually addressed to the instructors of three or four different courses that the student in question wants to get into.

No one knows why they do what they do, indeed . . .

PS: How did I forget to include this bit? About 25% of the students who I’ve written back, asking for (a) their full name and/or (b) the course they want to join, have never written me back again. I suppose that’s good. If you have a hard time answering either of those questions, after all, you’re going to have a helluva time with an actual exam or a research paper.

Several people (including many blog-less friends not linked here) have asked me about the Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference in Kingston, Jamaica that wrapped up early last week.  And I would be hard-pressed to do better than Melissa Gregg’s summary of the event . . . except, perhaps, to simply say to all those people who wanted to know how it went: You should’ve been there.

I know, of course, that there are lots of good reasons why people don’t make it to conferences.  Not enough time.  Not enough money.  Competing obligations.  The simple need/desire to be a homebody for a while, especially when conferences fall during the gap between semesters.  So I don’t really blame my curious but absent friends for not making it to Jamaica.  Still:  You should’ve been there.

I have been struck by the multiple requests for reports — not just friendly “how was the conference?” queries, but an explicit desire for extended details (who was there? who gave good papers? what’s new and hot in the field? etc.) — from friends who would have fit in perfectly, who would’ve enjoyed themselves immensely, and (most tellingly) who have been to enough conferences themselves to know that even the most thorough “report” is no substitute for being there.  The feel of a conference often matters as much as (and probably more than) the actual content of the presented papers, or the roster of attendees, or a rundown of who said what to whom at the hotel bar on the final night.  So I’m not going to try and provide a detailed accounting of the who and the what of the event, ’cause even if I were to feel the muse and be graced with the most eloquent way to capture five days worth of conversations, I still couldn’t do the event justice.  You should’ve been there.

One of the things I most appreciate about the Crossroads conferences — or at least the past two renditions — is the degree to which they take their international-ness very seriously.  To be sure, they’re not some perfectly ideal space of worldly cosmopolitanism: the official language of the conference is still English, and the global South remains under-represented.  At the same time, Crossroads isn’t the sort of “international” conference where most of the usual suspects from the US, Canada, and northern Europe simply gather in a big chain hotel in some different corner of the world for a long weekend and have the same basic conversations with each other that they could/would have had at a conference back home.  For me, Crossroads somehow manages to simultaneously feel both smaller and larger than those sorts of conferences.  It’s smaller, insofar as Crossroads has a much more tight-knit, communal feel to it than a Hilton/Sheraton/Hyatt-style conference.  While it’s still a fairly large gathering, I’ve come away from the past two versions feeling like I’ve shared an experience with several hundred people — and that doesn’t happen at most other conferences I attend.  And it’s larger, insofar as the people you’re sharing that experience with represent a much broader slice of the world than is the norm for “international” conferences.

We do it all again in 2010.  In Hong Kong.

You should be there.

. . . I hope to find something other than University labor politics to blog about. Honest. For now, however, here’s yet another letter. This one to the Minnesota Daily in response to an interview with Bob Bruininks published in today’s edition of the paper.

I would like to say that I’m surprised by President Bruininks’ comments about the AFSCME strike in today’s Daily. That, however, would imply that I expected him to say something that demonstrated honorable leadership — and that, as a result, I was caught off guard by his failure to do so. Given the administration’s generally hamfisted handling of the strike, however, I wasn’t at all surprised to find Bruininks dishing out more platitudes and propaganda. Disappointed, yes. But not at all surprised.

Bruininks claims that his childhood in a union household taught him that “no one, absolutely no one, wins when you have a strike.” But if he’d really learned that lesson, he’d have given AFSCME the same deal he gave the Teamsters. Not “something close” or “essentially a comparable proposal,” but the very same deal. It’s what AFSCME was asking for, it amounted to a ridiculously tiny sliver of the University’s overall budget, and it would have prevented the strike from ever happening. Presumably, Bruininks chose to offer AFSCME less than the Teamsters — and then to hold firm to that offer, even after the strike was called — because he thought that a strike wouldn’t hurt his administration badly enough to make it worth his while to avert it.

Bruininks’ description of the administration’s offer to AFSCME “essentially a comparable proposal” to the Teamsters deal is a fine display of propagandistic “weasel words.” It sounds well and good to say these are “comparable” offers, but all that really means is that it’s possible to put them side by side and consider their similarities: not that they’re actually equivalent to one another — much less that such a comparison would demonstrate a rough equivalence between them. By the same token, it’s possible for me to compare “President Bruininks” to “a weasel,” but the mere fact that I can do so doesn’t actually mean that Bruininks is a devious, thieving vermin — much less that such a comparison is fair to the weasel.

Bruininks also speaks compassionately about “reach[ing] out to our employees to see if we can heal whatever wounds are out there.” But he wasn’t interested in showing any such compassion or generosity when AFSCME workers asked for a living wage: he offered them a substandard deal and then refused to budge. He wasn’t interested in healing any wounds when faculty, students, and staff told him — over and over again — that his failure to settle the strike was hurting the University: he simply sent a few form letters to a tiny fraction of the University community who expressed such concerns, and then dismissed the rest of those dissenting voices as “noise.” And his definition of “reaching out” appears to be limited to “asking for money,” since the only outreach from the administration I’ve heard of has involved calls from the Alumni Association asking recent graduates — who also happen to be AFSCME workers, freshly back in the office after the end of the strike — if they’d chip in to help pay for the new football stadium.

Bruininks can put all the PR spin he wants to on the strike and its aftermath, but it’s going to take more than spin to “heal whatever wounds are out there.” If Bruininks really wants to do that, he needs to start by actually giving AFSCME the contract they asked for. Having failed to do that in the first place, however, now he will also have to work overtime to rebuild the good will — throughout the University community — that he’s so carelessly tossed away. He thinks that there “might be” some “lingering negativity” about the strike. The fact that he’s unsure about that shows that he simply hasn’t been paying very close attention. I’m sure there are people who weren’t bothered at all by the strike — and even people who would applaud the administration’s actions — but there are a lot of us who are still seething about the whole thing. I think most of us would be delighted to see Bruininks make a genuine and sincere effort to repair the damage he’s done to the community. But he’s certainly got his work cut out for him.

The brochure for the University’s annual Community Fund Drive arrived in my campus mailbox today. In past years, I have cheerfully contributed to this drive. It is, after all, a worthy range of causes. The people and programs who benefit from it are certainly worthy of the University’s generosity. The University’s efforts to reach out to the community this way are laudable. And I wish Vice President Barcelo and Vice President Mulcahy the best of luck in making the 2007 drive a success.

This year, however, the CFD will need to succeed without any financial contribution from me. This year, I have already elected to “continue [the University's] historic commitment to service and outreach” (to use President Bruininks’ words) by contributing to the AFSCME strike fund. I find it ironic — no, strike that. (And I do mean “strike that.”) I find it appalling and hypocritical that President Bruininks can attach a message to the CFD brochure expressing his desire for faculty and staff to “join [him] in this great tradition and contribute what [we] can” to “the needs of the state and its citizens” when he has so callously turned his back on the legitimate needs of the AFSCME workers who are such a vital part of the University community. The brochure works very hard to explain how much good can come from even a minimal contribution — a mere $3 per pay period can apparently do a great deal for the people of Minnesota — and I have no doubt that these claims are sincere and accurate. But it is nothing less than galling for President Bruininks to ask faculty and staff (and most especially staff) to embrace a spirit of generosity that he is clearly unwilling to apply to his own management of the University: less than 0.1% of the University’s budget, after all, could have been reallocated in ways that would have averted the AFSCME strike completely.

When President Bruininks can “walk the walk” of giving generously to the community in ways that match his ability to “talk the talk,” I will happily consider giving to the CFD once again. In the meantime, however, my financial generosity will continue to go towards the AFSCME strike fund. After all, if I’m going to donate a portion of my paycheck to the community — and I’m happy to do so — I’d prefer to share the wealth with people who clearly understand what the word “community” really means. And the University administration’s behavior these past few weeks is a clear indication that too many people in Morrill Hall simply don’t have a clue.

Why I chose to make Monday my “regular” blog posting day, I’m not sure.  It’s my long teaching day this semester, and several of those long days will be made longer by various meetings that are scheduled to happen in between my morning class and my afternoon seminar.  Not to mention the obligatory (for me, even if not always for anyone else) post-seminar retreat to the local brewpub for a bite to eat and a pint (or two) to drink.  Just when did I think that blogging would happen in all that?  I don’t know.  I simply don’t know.

Anywho . . . last Monday’s post never happened because Monday Night Football demanded my attention.  My team (who shall remain nameless here, seeing as how they have the most heinous and offensive nickname in all of professional sports) was playing, and when one lives 1100 miles away from one’s team’s homebase (and the guarantee of weekly TV opportunities), one doesn’t let a MNF appearance by one’s team slide by.  The blog, I’m afraid, suffered as a result.  But I did come away from the experience knowing, for the first time in my life, someone I could turn to should I ever want to place a bet with a bookie.  Not to mention a bar where “buying” shots for the bartender seems to mean that you and he and half the staff all drink for free.  So it wasn’t a total loss.

Less pretty — and something closer to a total loss (at least to this point) — is the AFSCME strike at the U, which officially ended last Friday . . . but only because the striking workers couldn’t afford to stay away from steady (if still inadequate) paychecks as long as the administration could afford to hold out.  There’s much more to say here, but I’m still feeling far too angry about it all to get it down cleanly.

I hadn’t planned for this entry to be entirely about my friend Nikki. And, after a fashion, it’s not really all about Nikki. But it’s been a day where multiple circumstances have had a strong Nikki aura to them, so it only makes sense to put a name to that.

1. Today, I wound up having lunch at the Dinkydome after my morning teaching. Which meant that the most convenient route for me to take to the strike location for my afternoon graduate seminar [sorry, no link yet, since the syllabus is still in flux] took me across the 10th Avenue Bridge . . . which gave me my first up-close, in-person look at the wreckage of the I-35W Bridge . . . which, even more than a month later, is a mind-blowing sight to behold. I’m not even going to try to capture in words what it feels like to see that much twisted steel and buckled concrete in one place — if you can count the full expanse of the Mississippi River plus several hundred feet on each bank as “one place” — since words won’t do it justice. But it makes it even harder for me to imagine what it would have felt like to be on the 10th Avenue Bridge precisely when the bridge right next to it crumpled without warning. Nikki didn’t have to imagine such a thing (though I’m sure she wishes that things were otherwise), since she was there.
2. My graduate seminar — which happens to include Nikki — looks like as strong and promising a group as any I’ve ever had the pleasure of teaching. And I’ve taught my fair share of stellar groups of students. Saying something like this in public, of course, will undoubtedly inspire some former student to wonder what was wrong with the cohort they were in when I taught some previous seminar. So let me assure any such folks, here and now, that any shortfalls in their cohort were someone else’s fault entirely. If nothing else, the occasional weak links in my graduate seminars — they’ve been rare, but the ones that I’ve had have tended to be pretty memorable in their weakness — are probably not folks who’re keeping tabs on my blog.
3. The ongoing saga of the AFSCME strike at the U. continues to be . . . well . . . ongoing. If there are active negotiations underway again between the administration and the union, neither side is saying so publicly. So folks like Nikki — who’s also one of the striking workers — will apparently be walking the picket lines for the foreseeable future. And I’ll be teaching my graduate seminar off campus for as long as the strike lasts.

As mentioned in this space last week, the University is facing a strike by clerical, technical, and health-care workers that’s slated to start Wednesday. Last week’s bargaining[sic] session found the University coming back to the table without budging from the very same offer that workers had rejected when they declared their intent to strike.

So I dedicated a chunk of my Labor Day to writing the following letter to University President Bob Bruininks:

It’s the start of a new school year and — in all sorts of ways — the campus looks gorgeous. I’m especially impressed by the flowerbeds around the Mall area. Two weeks ago, they were nothing special. Today, they’re filled with brightly colored blooms. Minnesota has extraordinarily fertile soil, but I know those flowers didn’t suddenly blossom overnight. They were purchased and planted to make the campus look extra beautiful at a moment when students and parents could be suitably impressed. World class universities don’t look like sandlots. They’re scenic and picturesque.

At the other end of campus, where the old remote parking lots are being torn up to make way for the new football stadium, things may not look quite as pretty as those flowerbeds, but I know that this is growth that the University points to with pride. The temporary ugliness of bulldozers and cranes will give way to a sparkling new facility that will benefit the University community for decades to come. World class universities don’t limit themselves to short-term planning. They think big and they plan for the future.

Last spring, in what was widely hailed as a major coup, the University lured Tubby Smith away from Kentucky to coach the men’s basketball team. Big name coaches like Smith don’t walk away from big time programs for peanuts. Reportedly, his new contract earns him more than $2 million per year. World class universities don’t pinch pennies. They know that a high quality product often costs more, and they’re willing to pay for it.

This summer, some of the University’s lowest paid — but most vital — workers entered into a fresh round of contract negotiations with the University. They asked for a pay raise that would allow their incomes to keep pace with inflation. Reportedly, the gap between what the workers requested and what the administration offered amounts to a bit more than $2 million per year. World class universities don’t pinch pennies . . .

If the University of Minnesota genuinely wants to be one of the top three public research universities in the world, it can not pinch pennies when it comes to paying the people who are essential to making every department, every office, every unit on campus function. It needs to recognize that a high quality product often costs more — and it needs to be willing to pay for it. The University can find a way to pay for new flowers every August that will be gone by mid-September. The University can find a way to pay for a multimillion dollar stadium that will sit empty more days of the year than not. The University can find a way to pay a single coach enough money to resolve the current labor dispute. So why can’t the University find a way to give 3500 valued workers a wage increase that will let them keep food on their tables and a roof over their heads?

I recognize that, ideally, the University shouldn’t have to choose between flowers and football stadiums, coaches and clerical workers. There should be room for a world class university to have all those things — and more. I recognize as well that the University does not simply mint fresh money in the basement of Morrill Hall, and that there are often more demands — legitimate demands — on the University’s budget than it can adequately meet. Faced with the need to make tough choices, however, a world class university does not abandon the people who keep the machinery of the university running. It takes care of them first.

I like the fresh flowers very much. But I’d gladly forgo them — this year and every year — in favor of keeping knowledgeable, efficient staff members working at the University. Faculty can do our jobs perfectly well whether there’s a stadium on campus or not, whether the basketball coach is a Big Name or not. But we can’t do our jobs well without the colleagues who are currently asking for nothing more than the ability to keep pace with the rising cost of living.

I urge you to bring a fair and equitable offer back to the bargaining table — and to do so sooner, rather than later — so that the current labor dispute can be settled and so that we can all go back to the task of making the Minnesota the world class university we all believe it can be.

Sincerely,
Gilbert B. Rodman
Associate Professor
Department of Communication Studies

1. The start of another new school year is upon us. And I’m always astounded by the way that this time of year can be filled with amazing optimism and amazing stress, all at once. All that fresh energy in the air, and all those grandiose hopes that this will finally be the semester where all the students are sharp and dedicated and eager to be here, and that everything will run smooth as silk . . . and all that frenzied energy in the air, courtesy of the syllabi that aren’t quite finished yet and the hours spent at the photocopier so that things can all be in place for Day One.
2. The start of another school year means the end of another summer. And this one ended with a fine gathering of a small battalion of friends (and family of friends) at our place on Saturday night . . . and into the wee hours of Sunday morning. The grilled salmon was tasty, the home brew (something called August Ale, and my first batch in more than a decade) was a hit, and the three-table Scrabble tournament (the ostensible excuse for the gathering) was fun, but it was the game of Balderdash that put the capper on the evening. You know you’ve had a good party when your guests blog about it the next day.
3. ‘Round here, the start of this particular school year may also bring a strike by clerical staff. Let’s hope the U’s administration manages to come back to the bargaining table on this one — quickly — in ways that make everyone happy.

Ted Striphas is running a caption contest on his blog involving a photo of a baby holding a book by every toddler’s favorite French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze. I’m still working on my entry (how could I not? Ted’s offering such fabulous prizes!) but — in the meantime — I was reminded of a moment about 18 months ago when I found myself watching after an almost-a-toddler for a few hours while her parents were otherwise occupied. And watching Svetlana play with her fuzzy books while surrounded by Ron and Z’s mountains of critical theory tomes inspired me to do a few literary mash-ups of my own.

Baby’s First Spivak
see the happy people. we call them “altern”

see the sad people. we call them “subaltern”

see the altern speak. hear the altern speak.

see the subaltern … no. no, you don’t.

the end.

Baby’s First Gramsci
karl was right. but karl was wrong.
let me tell you how in song.
rich men rule. rich men bad.
rich men make the poor real sad.
karl thinks poor are fooled by rich
who turn poor’s minds off like a switch.
i think poor are pretty smart.
rich don’t rule their minds — they steal the heart.
poor can still defeat the rich
but it’s not easy — life’s a bitch.
poor folks minds are full of doubt
but strength of will should see them out!

Baby’s First Said
once upon a time, there was a happy land called “the west.” only the people from the west didn’t know they were part of “the west.” they thought they were the whole world.

then one day, some people from the west met some people from “the east.” and the people from the west realized that they weren’t the whole world anymore.

but the people from the west liked to think that they were the whole world. so they pretended that the people from the east were weak and lazy. and so they sent soldiers with guns to kill the people from the east and steal their gold. and they told lies about the east that made the people from the west believe that all this was fair and good and right.

eventually, the people from the west forgot that the stories they were telling about the east were lies. but they couldn’t stop telling those stories because those stories made it possible for them to still believe that the west was the whole world.

and they all lived unhappily ever after.

I never got around to Baby’s First Deleuze, but maybe now I need to do so . . .

My junk e-mail filter this morning included an e-mail from Judy Genshaft, President of USF. There’s something poetically fitting about her message automatically being shuffled into my “junk” folder, since her standard policy with respect to faculty input on major issues was (and presumably still is) to accept them without ever actually paying attention to them.

What’s amazing to me, though, is that I’m still getting such messages at all. Officially, my USF appointment ended in early May 2006, and I assumed that my two USF e-mail accounts would get closed out not too long after that. I figured there’d be a relatively brief delay — maybe a month — while my change of status trickled through the University’s bureaucracy and tripped all the appropriate Off switches. And even though I knew from personal experience that said bureaucracy is dense enough that light bends around it, I also knew that the USF administration is awfully persnickety about what faculty can and can’t do using University resources — and figured that the latter would trump the former when it came to things like closing off access to USF computers.

Guess I was wrong. Nearly nine months after the official end of my employment there, both my old USF e-mail accounts are still fully operational. Most of what comes into these accounts these days is spam . . . but I do receive a few wayward e-mails every week where the sender believes that I’m still the Director of Graduate Studies for my old department: a title I relinquished way back in 2004. A more mischievous soul could probably wreak all sorts of low level havoc with this. The stakes, however, simply aren’t worth the effort, especially since the people who’d probably wind up having to clean up after any such mischief are people I still like.