Ridding UNCG of Parasites

It has been several thousands of years since rulers realized that a population guided by principles of mutual trust was much more productive. This doesn’t mean that societies end up living in pure harmony, what it means is that the laws and rules put in place were designed to facilitate interactions between people who were not friends or family members. The benefit of creating comfort for ongoing interactions among large groups of unrelated individuals comes from the non-zero-sum nature of information and knowledge. The more that more people know, the more knowledge those people can produce none of which limits the amount of knowledge available to others or for future discovery.

Robert Wright uses the metaphor of the brain to describe a productive human system. The more neurons (people) the more the overall knowledge the brain can both access and produce, nurturing the health and growth of the brain itself (and therefore its neurons). There is nothing to be gained from a rogue ‘neuron’ conquering and destroying others. It eventually damages the brain to the point that the neuron itself cannot survive – in other words, it leads to a total loss.

Should each neuron in the brain insist on working by itself, there is no doubt that things such as language, writing, medicine, or cake could never have been developed. If a neuron were to, let’s say, refuse to answer emails or always work with its door shut, it would not be contributing to the growth of the brain’s potential but instead would be a parasitic entity trying to benefit from the production of others while failing to contribute any value of its own.

If the goal of the collection of neurons into a brain is the advancement of opportunity, information, and benefits then there is a requirement for mutual and transparent communication. This has been demonstrated through an exercise known as The Prisoner’s Dilemma. The situation offered as an example is that of two prisoners who are being separately interrogated – cooperation is in their mutual interest but there are also two primary barriers to this cooperation.

The first barrier is the inability of the two to communicate with each other. You cannot communicate if there is a wall (either physical or social) between you. If your door is shut, your attitude is hostile, and your emails unanswered, communication for mutual benefit is impossible.

The second barrier is one of trust. If you cannot openly communicate with a person who is neither a friend or family member, how can you develop the ability to trust that they will do what is in the best interest of all? If they continually indicate that they don’t trust you by engaging in regular practices of anti-social behavior, the possibility to believe that their actions are or will ever be designed to be of mutual benefit is nil.

The question then becomes, why would two (or more) neurons in the same brain, ostensibly working for the betterment of the brain as a whole (and therefore the mutual benefits to its neurons) not build the possibility for open communication and trust?

The answer would have to be that they are either a sociopath or that they see a benefit to themselves that requires or is contingent upon sacrificing the health of the brain. They have other goals.

Obviously, this is a metaphor.

What I am asking here is this:

If members of UNCG’s administration (and here I am thinking particularly of Paul Mason, although he is simply representative of the type of executive that UNCG’s new public management culture has favored) are interested in the growth of UNCG as a university (that’s the brain) then how do we explain their actions?

We can’t.

Instead, those actions become explicable only if we realize that they are not working for the positive growth of the university as an institution of higher education. They have a separate set of interests…and to find out what they are, you have only to follow the money.

The faculty, staff, and students at UNCG are feeling the impact of the zero sum game being played by upper administration. Each time a neuron dies, each time a person disappears from the collective consciousness of that brain, it entails a loss of knowledge. We are each weaker for it. Certainly there are times when through growth or death, we will lose people who contribute to our overall well-being. At other times, though, we must look to surgically remove those who cause damage.

Recently, our mind has been deprived of Lyda Carpen, Beth English, Chris English, Betsi Robinson, Debbie Schallock, Andrea Spencer, and David Wilson. We have also been injured by the loss of Helen Hebert, Laurie Sims, Nelson Bob, Linda Carter, Patti Stewart, Steve Gilliam, and many others.

There is a continual, concerted, and intentional effort to carve away those who would send signals of alarm at the rampant parasitism. As with all parasites there will come a time when the damage is so severe that both the host and parasite are lost. In the short term, however, the benefits to a few are great enough that they will willingly sacrifice everyone’s potential for mutual benefit in order to collect as much as they can right now.

They are fools to sacrifice so much for so little. They give up more than they will gain. Even the corporate world understands that the non-zero sum gains to all are greater than the momentary theft of current assets. Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and Freddie Mac demonstrated quite clearly what happens – you could have $1 billion now but end up disgraced, jailed, and ruined or you could accept $1 million per year and be remembered as a hero. Short sighted greed will never buy long term good.

UNCG’s administration has gone corporate…but it has gone out of date corporate. Google, Costco, IDEO – these companies and many others realize that happy employees are more productive employees. They understand the non-zero sum nature of the collective brain.

I’m not suggesting they are philanthropists. Running a business isn’t a charity. However, they are smart. They see the benefits that come sharing, from feeding the brain, that are longer term and more sustainable than those that can be obtained by being a parasite. They also are working for the success of the company as an entity. UNCG’s administration has forgotten about the success of the university as an entity and become obsessed with the simple reproduction of administrative structures.

The UNCG community isn’t under attack. It’s up for sale.

You Already Knew This, But...

I hate to be the bearer of bad news so early in 2015, but really it’s not new. Do you remember all those times that you kept working at UNCG even though you were told there was no money to give you a raise because you valued the community you belonged to and you knew we were all having to ‘tighten our belts’ to get through these ‘tough financial times’?

Well…It turns out there was plenty of money. There were a fair number of raises too. Some of them were really small – hardly enough to compensate for increases in health care co-pays. Some of them were pretty significant. The big raises went to those who needed them the least while the rest of us were left making less than we had the year before.

Laura Young, Associate Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs got a measly $2,500 raise. Of course, when you realize she was making $125,580 and went to $128,092 some of your sympathy might evaporate. During the same period, Jill Yesko, a public communication specialist also got a raise from $41,923 to $42,231 – doesn’t it seem like the $2,500 that Young got would have made a much bigger difference to someone like Yesko? Especially given that Yesko started only one year later than Young. After all, if we were all tightening our belts, why doesn’t the top have to tighten as much as the bottom?

Alan Boyette has seen his salary rise from $208,438 in 2008 to $221,486 in 2014. In other words his raise has been from ½ to 1/3 of the salary of many of the employees at UNCG.

Michael T. Byers, for being such a good friend and lackey during the first phase of the take over of Glenwood has moved from a comfortable $103,910 to $127,285 from 2008 – 2014. This was before deciding to jump ship as he watched the waters rise. Apparently, the work of Willie Brown, dedicated UNCG employee since 1999 wasn’t worth rewarding with more than a pittance in 2008 (less than $700) and yet Byers received a raise the size of Brown’s entire yearly salary.

Who is still here and working hard for UNCG? Willie Brown, of course. Byers leapt at an opportunity to get away before trouble started to rain down on his head for all the sleazy dealings in Glenwood. As Byers once said, “No matter how many showers I take, I just can’t get clean.” And that’s where we invested the university’s money. Why? Because that’s where the administration wanted to spend it.

We’ve been tightening our belts not because there isn’t any money but because this administration has decided that the people who do the work of UNCG, the ‘little people’ don’t deserve it. Instead they reserve it for lackeys and friends and as a way of buying the loyalty of those who are willing to sell it. This doesn’t mean that everyone who has gotten a raise has sold themselves. What it means is that every raise given is an attempt to buy that person. Some of that, I’ll have to address in a separate post when we look at who was cleared out by new managerial appointments under Brady (in other words…stay tuned.)

Of course, we’ve already seen the meteoric rise of Cheryl Callahan from the near starvation level salary of $140,000 per year to her current $188,181. It should come as no surprise then that she seems to have no idea either that students often have to take out loans in order to go to school at UNCG or how those loans might be structured. This is especially unfortunate given her position as Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, but when asked at a meeting about student fees in regard to the new rec center, she was unable to offer even any embarrassment over her ignorance in that regard.

Now, the reason that I bring any of this up is because, as has been said by others before, education at UNCG is not under attack, it is up for sale. And if you are not willing or simply able to aide those who would sell it then you will not be treated kindly. The real ‘crime’ that the UNCG3, and the rest of those who suffered banishment from University Relations (as well as those cleared out of athletics and advancement), are being punished for is an inability to make villains appear to be heroes and an unwillingness to quietly submit to making a lie of all of the good that UNCG has been. Cheryl Callahan and Michael Byers had no such compunction.

The positions involuntarily vacated in University Relations are now being brought back into being, reclassified as EPA (Exempt from Personnel Act) which will make them that much easier to clear out should any new employees prove to have the same lack of moral flexibility that was demanded of those who previously held them.

Just as we are seeing struggles across the country by those working in minimum wage positions for reasonable pay and greater job security, those very basics are being cut out from under the feet of every employee at UNCG. And so, we lose those who are dedicated or we grind them into the dirt, while raising those who are willing to abandon their principles or unable to take the risk of refusing to participate.

This slide down must be addressed in order for it to be reversed. We can’t strike, but maybe we can slow down?

It’s just a thought.