Looks Like We've Been Zinked

I've just learned something that may explain the car.

Jeff Collins, a UNCG alum and former president of the Alumni Board builds reproduction Cobras and it is quite possible that he loaned this one to Gilliam either for just the photo or for the welcome events. I hope that is true and find it to be a relief, although it does point to another ongoing issue: Jan Zink's idea of the image required by the university.

Is the image we want portrayed that our chancellor can drive around in a half a million dollar car? Does that reflect who we are (and does it indicate we need big donor support?!?)

I learned about this through an inside source, but I doubt most of the community will ever know that this beautiful car isn't the way the chancellor gets to and from his outings.

Here are some other ideas that Zink might have had on her notepad while brainstorming a way to turn UNCG into an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians:

1. See if Paris Hilton can replace the spartan as our mascot
2. Have the chancellor drink champagne from a woman's shoe while fox hunting
3. Hire air force one to deliver Gilliam's off campus mail
4. mink office chair?
5. dress Chancellor & Mrs. Gilliam as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette for ticket only costume ball...arrive in carriage pulled by six white horses

I don't know, if she didn't think of those, they certainly seem right up her alley. How's Gilliam going to change his image if he still has Jan "Diamonds on Her Fingers" Zink kicking around his image and trying desperately to advance herself?

This image is wrong, wrong, wrong - accusations were already flying (unfounded or no) about the chancellor's first class flights, mansion upgrades, and staffing perks. Taking a picture in an expensive car while on the way to series of country club events doth not a chancellor of the people make; it's fuel to the fire.

Are we a fancy school where a highfalutin chancellor jets around on first class flights or in luxurious cars to elite events to rub elbows with wealth?

or

Are we a school for first generation students and veterans that prides itself on educating those who've worked hard (and continue to do so) to get here with a dedicated faculty and loyal, hard working staff creating the next generation of graduates who will do us proud?

I know where the Zink wants to take us...but she'll have to take me kicking and screaming.

How to Reform a Wayward Executive

I’m getting reports that Bryan Terry has been quieter recently. It seems like many on campus are in a holding pattern, just waiting to see the new chancellor.

Our new chancellor has an excellent opportunity to come in and turn this institution around. I’m not talking about massive infusions of funds (although that’s there too), I’m talking about setting an example for the way in which administration, staff, faculty, students, alumni, and community members should be working together. If Brady created (or exaggerated) this culture of bullying, it’s clear that the next person has the chance to create an atmosphere befitting of an academic institution. The fact that people are waiting for the new chancellor before they show their cards again means that the time is ripe for leading them in a new direction.

I wish her/him all the best in this. I think the lessons learned are clear and anybody with half a brain doesn’t have to read my blog in order to have understood them. There are a lot of positions to be filled and the choices made will have a profound impact on UNCG.

In case some people need a little extra assistance, I’ve put together some suggestions for helping transition the folks in upper administration who haven’t been able to ‘move on to better opportunities.’

Bryan Terry’s contract will include mandatory anger management classes as well as a slow and detailed explanation of the difference between a compliment and an insult.

Kim Record’s salary will now be calculated as a percentage of the profit from ticket sales to sporting events. She will be assigned a board of advisors to assist her in all decision-making. This board will be made up entirely of members of the former wrestling team.

Kim Record's Board of Advisors

Bonita Brown will be required to join the Girl Scouts and earn a badge in ‘plays well with others.’

Benita Peace will complete a spiritual journey under the guidance of the Dali Lama until she can find her center by reciting ‘hostile work environment’ in the lotus position.

Jan Zink will serve in the peace corps digging ditches and building water filtration systems until such time as she understand that the word ‘authentic’ can be used in other ways than to distinguish fake and real fur coats. Or until the earth crashes into the sun, whichever comes first.

There. That’s a good start. 

Tune in tomorrow when I’ll provide some application and interview tips that could help us weed out the a$$holes before they are hired.

Jan Zink Advances Backwards

I guess managing an extra five people turned out to be too much for dear Jan “Basket Queen” Zink. But her reign was not without accomplishments, of course. It’s just that I can’t think of any of them. I’m sure something will come to me.

[Note: accomplishments to be listed here just as soon as they become clear]

She managed, in her brief tenure, to drive away Lanita Goins further reducing the skeleton crew of university relations refugees. Rumor has it that even the birds stopped singing and several typefaces left the university in protest.

She’ll probably be sad to give up Betsi Robinson’s old office as I hear she had converted it into a humidor for her extensive collection of Cuban cigars. I could be wrong though.

Meanwhile, we’ve received James Thornton to egregiously chancellorate us through the next six months. He may be a lovely person, I have no idea, but I guess by comparison, how bad could he possibly be? And, after all, with his expertise in fundraising, he may just make Zink even more redundant than she already was.

And, at the very least, Thornton wins some sort of prize for the speed with which he updated his LinkedIn profile to reflect his new position. Elsewhere, LinkedIn is littered with the former connections of our least beloved who, despite continuing to be unemployed (and unemployable) have failed to remove their “Vice Chancellor of X” designations. Of course, I’m not sure “layabout” or “disgruntled claimant” really has the cache they were hoping for.

I hope Zink recognizes that this is the signal heralding closure of her time at UNCG. She’s not long in her old position either as the word ‘advancement’ couldn’t be used to describe anything she has conjured into being since arriving on our doorstep and since she has been here for slightly over two administrator years, that’s nearly a lifetime of employment in human years.

To put all of this into context, I turn to Joe “Golden Tongue” Gallehugh who, in an effort to capture the subtleties of the complex organism that is the university, said: “No comment.”

I propose a basket of ice as a parting gift and directions to Seth Cohen’s office should she find anything about her exit confusing.

99 People and Counting...

I've just received a few more names to add to the list of those who exited UNCG under Kim Record's distinctive leadership. Nearly 100 people found the environment worth leaving behind. Nearly every day I hear from someone with a confirmation of the toxic nature of her management. She has been protected by the bubble of administrative superiority for a long time, but now that this bubble is deflating, I wonder how much longer she'll be with us?

She never seems to have been particularly compatible with UNCG, almost as if she wants to make us into something we're not. A favorite tactic seems to be to cut off resources from those who need them and then to claim surprise at their failure to thrive. Sure it's underhanded and not particularly sportsmanlike but why would we look to the leader of our athletics program to demonstrate notions of fair play?

In any case, at least she did play a little defense after her assistant AD Brian Battle tried to strangle a soccer player on the field. By which I mean, she buried the story and possibly paid Battle to go away. That's a move that's pretty standard in the UNCG playbook, I'm sure he followed some better opportunity. It seems that even if you mess up badly (ie somebody catches you) your "externalization" is still padded.

That's why I guess I'm still surprised that they didn't offer that same face saving opportunity to Edna Chun that they did to Paul Mason (who apparently either was paid off enough that he doesn't need to work...or it's awful hard for him to escape what his name has come to represent). I wouldn't feel too badly for Chun though, after all, she's used to moving on. In fact, almost all of these executive types are. It's too bad we can't do a trade, get back some of the people who were long term members of UNCG's community in exchange for the release of some of these upper admins back into the wild.

Barring that, or a genuine reformation by those remaining, it'd be helpful if we could wrap up the executive admin exodus before the arrival of the new chancellor; give her/him a fresh start, a fighting chance. We all want our new chancellor to succeed and in order to help ensure that s/he can swim, it's time to release some of the dead weight that might pull even an olympian to the bottom.

Kim Record
Benita Peace
Jan Zink
Bonita Brown
Bryan Terry

If you love us, you'll leave us. And if you don't...we'll drum you out.

A bit of helpful advice.

The Fight for a Living Wage

Across the country today, workers are joining the struggle for a living wage.

Why we seem so thoroughly convinced that universities shouldn’t get money from the state and yet seem perfectly content to let those same dollars subsidize the externalized costs of big companies is something tragic.

In any case, the reason I bring this up is because UNCG participates in this shameful low wage cabal. What I mean is that we aren’t all poor struggling to get by, UNCG just has some employees that it pays a pittance to and some who get fat raises at the same time.

For example, Tim Crews who has worked for UNCG for 19 years is employed full time for $10 an hour. If minimum wage had kept up with cost of living increases it would now be $18 an hour. So, we pay him only slightly more than half of what the absolute bare minimum pay should be.

After 25 years of loyal performance, Alice Courts only makes $23,762 a year. And she’s on the list of essential employees who must come to work at UNCG even when hazardous weather causes others to stay at home and the university to close.

Imogene Cathey, however, pulls in a handsome $85 an hour.

Jan Zink rakes in $137 per hour.

And they get to stay home.

UNCG has more than 200 full time employees earning less than $15/hour. Adjunct pay is shameful too.

Nancy Maree has been willingly teaching our students in the nursing program for 12 years and in return? She get $1,000. That’s all a class is worth? That’s all her expertise and insight are worth?

And, of course, the enormous raises given to those who already make more than they deserve continue to roll in. The execs get bigger salaries while the rest of us have to deal with nothing or fight among ourselves for scraps.

We are the workers.

We are the people.

We can do better.

Numbers Don't Lie But You Have to Ask the Right Questions

One of the cards that administrators like to use when paying for things that they want while saying that there isn’t money for what others want (need) is the idea that the money they have to spend somehow exists in inviolable separate bundles. They use this mantra to indicate that their hands are clean, but that they are bound to, in an amazing coincidence, pay for the things they wanted at the expense of others.

This has been demonstrated time and time again to simply be untrue in the strongest, most direct sense of the word. There are (at least) two important things to keep in mind about university finances:

1. Yes, there are some rules from the state regarding money that has been appropriated for specific expenditures not being redirected toward other expenditures. However, we have to keep in mind that all that this means is that we need to ensure that our administration asks for the right things. Legislators don’t wake up in the morning and decide they’d like to fund an unplanned rec center. They have been asked to and once they have determined that they would like to fund such an enterprise (for a whole set of reasons that I hope to be able to address later) that money is set aside for that.

2. There are two systems of accounting at work here. One that is mandated by the state and the other that is set up internally within the university. The one used within the university is changeable and is being misused. The budget is a projection of the ways in which the university would like to spend money, not a reflection of how it has been spent. Right now, it is being used by upper admin to claim that there is simply nothing that can be done to change the way the money is spent and to protect executive expenditures at all costs (pun intended and tragic).

As an example, Kim Record’s basketball pipedream is being funded out of available resources to the tune of $8 million. That money is not legally restricted to funding athletics, it has simply been budgeted for it. It could be redirected (yet another topic I’ll have to cover later) or at least scaled back - possibly tied to her ability to demonstrate a newfound ability to retain employees...

UNCG is also holding approximately $85 million in unrestricted funds that could have been used, for example, to ‘repay’ the money we had to give back because of the ‘accidental’ incorrect projection of student numbers. Instead, the execs put on their long faces and cried crocodile tears as they asked the rest of us to suffer.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Professor of Accounting from Eastern Michigan State laid it all out in great detail, just as he has done for several other universities, and has shown that UNCG didn’t need to go under the knife.

As the Board of Trustees promises the incoming chancellor a salary increase while the message comes down to the rest of us that yet again there will be not only no pay increases but continued shaving of whatever meager budget has been left, I think it’s only right we ask for a full accounting. And while the Bryan Foundation may be footing the bill for the upgrade the chancellor’s mansion, I think it’s time we ask if they would consider donating that money to other university causes more vital to its continuing mission.

And as the legislature hands down more budget cuts while the BoG springs for a tuition increase, it’s definitely time for Jan Zink to reconsider her $150k ice sculpture expenditures (or whatever other frivolous folly she has dreamed up in the meantime).

Heck, I'd even chip in for a dictionary for the execs so that they can use the same definition of the word "civility" as the rest of us.

The Top 9 Least Wanted, Or, Why It's Not Yet Time to Move On

Paul Mason is gone, relegated to the ‘better opportunity’ given to him by staying at home and off of UNCG campus. The Chancellor is leaving in July, albeit to a year with full pay and no work expected and, after that, the possibility of (heaven forbid) returning to walk among the faculty. Imogene Cathey has been demoted, although for some reason that doesn’t mean that she gets paid any less…and she surely wasn’t demoted for excellence of service, so you’d think it would.

But there are still bullies at UNCG and we need to smoke them out before the work here is done. The culture that Brady created will take years of hard work to undo and given the makeup and bent of the search committee as well as the type of downward pressure exerted by the Board of Governor’s, it doesn’t bode well. If our next chancellor is any of the things that we have requested, it will be due to the dedicated work of a few members of the search committee or a complete accident.

I guess that means that our biggest hope is that the incompetence this Board of Trustees has shown so far extends to an inability to select the candidate they want, thereby inadvertently choosing someone good for what UNCG has always stood for: community in scholarship.

We are a microcosm of what is happening in the North Carolina system as a whole, which makes our demons a bit more difficult to exorcise. But it will be done. So, here, I give the UNCG Top 9 Least Wanted List:

1. Bonita Brown**

2. Jan Zink

3. Bryan Terry

4. Kim Record

5. Edna Chun*

6. Benita Peace

7. Imogene Cathey

8. Linda Brady

9. Paul Mason

So, we’ve made some progress, but there is work to be done. Let these people be on notice – their behavior will be under the microscope so they’d better shape up or ship out. Nobody loves a reformed sinner more than we do, so apologies and a sincere (and successful) effort to abandon their bullying ways might put them on the road to make amends.

No more yelling at staff, treating them with disdain, or using condescension as a default tone of voice.

No more driving our staff to tears, to therapy, to drink, to divorce, or despair.

No more being technically correct while at the same time being ethically bankrupt.

No more superiority, swagger, or immunity from consequences.

The owl will be watching.

*Updated as of 4/16/15 to reflect her dismissal
**Updated as of 9/14/15 to reflect her resignation