[Vision2020] Let's Cut Rapunzel's Hair; or Why the UI needs a Revolution.

[Joan Opyr]

Dear Visionaries:

It has come to my attention that incoming UI President Timothy White won't 
be making $162,000 per annum after all.  He'll be making $162,000 plus a 
generous "supplemental compensation package" from the supposedly strapped UI 
Foundation, an amount rumored to be in the neighborhood of $100,000.  
Altogether, that's $262,000, give or take a few grand.  Plus a house and a 
car.  And maybe a pony.  (Who knows?  Supplemental compensation isn't 
defined.)

In another time and place, I might have bought the argument that a 
university president deserves to be paid $262,000 plus free housing and 
transport.  I'd have said that Dr. White's experience and academic 
qualifications, not to mention the difficulty of the job at hand, justified 
his salary.  But this isn't that time, and this isn't that place.  The 
University of Idaho is so broke that it can't afford to run a university 
press.  It's so short of funds that students are being crammed 100 and 150 
to some core classes.  It's too poor to pay faculty, too poor to pay staff, 
and too poor, it would seem, to pay attention.  Just like the poor old 
snake, poor old UI doesn't have a pit to hiss in.

Some of this is the fault of the state legislature.  Those jokers in Boise 
cut the UI's budget by thirty million dollars, ten million dollars a year 
for three years.  Well, bugger tax cuts.  I don't know about you, but my 
share the great tax savings ended up being just enough to buy a Cowboy 
Burger at Applebee's.  Even if it had been more, I'd still rather have a 
healthy, vital University of Idaho to send my children to in 2013 and 2018, 
respectively, than a few extra dollars to dink around with now.

The rest is the fault of Bob Hoover, Jerry Wallace, and that sorry 
collection of high-ranking Yes-men who sat around the UI Administration 
building and nodded their heads up and down like so many bobble-head dolls 
on the package shelf of a '68 Buick.  Eighteen million dollars disappeared 
into the Black Hole of Bobcutta.  Eighteen million.  But where is Bob 
Hoover?  And where is Jerry Wallace?  And where did we put those blindfolds 
and cigarettes?  Like Kenneth Lay, they walked away, and lived to mismanage 
another day.  (Note to Albertson's College: check your wallet.)

I wish Tim White well, I really do, but what I fear is that by offering the 
incoming president $262,000 plus perks, in a school that's hemorrhaging 
faculty, staff, and auxiliaries, we are perpetuating a cycle of imperial 
administrations.  Yeah, yeah, I know that White's salary is the going rate 
for college presidents.  I also know that college presidents' salaries are 
nothing compared to the compensation and perks paid to corporate CEOs.  But 
that doesn't make it right.  In this fiscal climate, it's dead wrong.  
Universities are not corporations, education is not a product, and students 
are not consumers.  In the university system, the provost is the chief 
academic officer; the president is the chief administrator.  As far as 
university governance is concerned, that belongs – or should belong – to the 
faculty.  The institution needs to be democratic, not hierarchical.  Not 
secretive.  Not top down.  Had they known about it, and been accorded their 
rightful role in university governance, the faculty might have prevented the 
Boise Place disaster.  They might have said, democratically, "Sorry Bob.  
Sorry, Jerry.  We need that money right here in Moscow.  We need it for 
recruitment and retention and staff support.  What we don't need are bricks 
and sticks to impress the pricks who are wrecking this school down in Boise. 
  Savvy?"

Perhaps you think me harsh.  Ha!  The original plans for Boise Place 
featured a palatial suite of rooms for the UI President that would have 
taken up the entire sixth floor.  This, while departments on campus were 
running out of money for photocopy paper.  It's not our faculty who live in 
an ivory tower; it's our imperial university presidents.  And you know how 
they get up there?  They climb the Board of Regents' golden hair.  If only 
we could dump this load of political hacks and elect our regents directly . 
. . but I digress.

Friends, visionaries, and people whose computers are too slow to let you 
delete before you read this, I am not a cynic.  I'm a critic, but I'm also 
an optimist.  When things go wrong, I believe in proposing solutions.  So I 
tell you what – why don't I make the Idaho Board of Education an offer they 
would be fools to refuse?  I'll be president of the UI for thirty thousand a 
year plus modest health benefits (I'd like a pair of glasses, a flu shot, 
and a yearly dental cleaning); a modest retirement plan (a 401K will do); 
and a small jar of pickled herring (for when alumni come over and I have to 
entertain them.)

Sure, I haven't finished my PhD, and I've never been a university president. 
  I've also never been a vice president, a provost, or a professor.  I have 
been a student, a graduate student, and a poorly-paid, uninsured lecturer.  
But my greatest qualification – and this is a biggie – is that I've never 
pissed away eighteen million dollars of someone else's money.  I've never 
planned to build a palace for myself while my underlings had to scrounge 
around for ballpoint pens.  I've never caused massive layoffs and employee 
displacements because I was financially incompetent, surrounded by cronies, 
and blissfully free from criticism.  (I accidentally bounced a check once, 
but I made immediate restitution and paid the $20 returned check fee.)

As for my positive attributes, I'm honest.  I don't backstab; I front stab.  
I have a temper, sure, but God knows I don't sublimate it.  When you catch 
hell from me, you catch it directly and in person.  No behind the scenes 
Machiavellian bullshit; no sending proxies to do my dirty work; no plausible 
deniability; and no third party hatchet-men.  For good or ill, I autograph 
all of my handiwork.

My agenda, such as it is, is entirely transparent.  I think universities 
exist to facilitate teaching, education, research, and outreach.  It's true 
that sports are important to me, but they're so important that I think 
everyone ought to have the chance to play.  To that end, my first act as 
President will be to abolish the university's semi-professional (and we all 
know that any state school's amateur status is nothing more than a polite 
fiction) football and basketball teams and replace them with lots and lots 
of intramural sports.  Football for the masses, rather than football for the 
elite few.  Baseball, softball, basketball, lacrosse, hockey, field hockey, 
rowing, archery, you name it, I'll support it.  With the money we'll save on 
coaches, fancy swimming pools, and gold-plated locker rooms, we'll be more 
than able to pay for all the necessary bats and balls and sticks and pucks.  
I also think that we'll finally begin to really promote and encourage the 
values of good sportsmanship.  Remember those?  The added bonuses -- that 
we'll be blissfully free of any potential Bobby Knights or that Colorado 
football jackass, and that we'll clear off a four million dollar debt in the 
blink of an eye -- are just icing on the cake.

Once I'm done fixing the UI – and if I fail, you can fire me with just 
thirty days notice rather than a sweetheart severance deal including a brand 
new job for more pay at another university in the state – I think I'll run 
for President of the United States.  I've never cheated on my wife, so 
that's a point in my favor, and I'm not likely to because . . . well, 
because she'd clobber me.  Also, unlike the current occupant of the Oval 
Office, I don't have a criminal record.  I've never been arrested for drunk 
driving.  I did get a speeding ticket once for going 63 in that 45 zone 
between the Moscow Cemetery and the Elks' Club Golf Course, but I paid the 
fine and got some auto insurance premium therapy for my lead foot.

Brothers and sisters, I am cured.  Now I drive like Granny Clampett with an 
astigmatism.  So vote for me.  Put me in office.  Give me a chance.  What a 
bargain!

What the puck?

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment

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