Frostbitten Fingers

In my continuing quest to save the university money, I thought I would collect the ice needed for the sculptures that Jan Zink seems to believe are the key to our donor's checkbooks. I'm only too afraid that in the face of her failure, her next plan will be to demonstrate UNCG's suitability as a recipient for donations by lighting things on fire. Apparently, she is operating under the assumption that our alums haven't experienced some of nature's most basic wonders...maybe she should try accurately predicting an eclipse?

In any case, I had nearly finished collecting what I believed would be a reasonable amount of snow, when somebody sent me pictures of the kind of things that Zink would be expecting from her frozen frivolities. I may have to move to Boston. I don't think it's coming down hard enough here to be able to deliver her fix.

I wonder how much it is costing to provide valet parking at these shindigs? After all, the people who work here have to PAY to park here. I wonder how much money the university could raise if it didn't have any employees. Probably none. So maybe a better investment would be to reduce the cost for parking for employees. I don't think these glitz and glam tactics are fooling anybody.

I guess I also can't help but wonder if we couldn't have found any sort of reusable but elegant ornamentation that could be used...we do have art and design departments on campus.

After all, we can't get raises, fix our buildings, or even keep our jobs since the budgets are being cut and cut and cut, right?

And, all of our financial woes are just coming down to us from Raleigh, right??

So, there's no chance that once the money that comes to the university is being spent in a way that is causing its faculty, staff, and students to suffer, right??

And since everything is ordered from Raleigh, there is no way that we could decide, for example, not to use it on ice sculptures but rather to pay for anything else, right??

Because that would mean there was a failure on the part of our leadership, not some hardship that we just have to deal with...and that would mean that we should demand that our leadership stop failing.

RIGHT?!?

Oh, I see.

We don't have a financial crisis. 
We have a leadership crisis. 

It's going to take a lot more than ice to heal that injury.

   

Opportunistic Greensboro Gives Community Service Award to Brady

I had to reread this story several times before I was able to overcome my firm belief that I must be misunderstanding it. However, and hold on to your barf bags, here is what was released in the Campus Weekly this morning:

“Chancellor Linda P. Brady and NC A&T Chancellor Harold Martin received the Thomas Z. Osborne Distinguished Citizen Award from the Greensboro Partnership at their annual dinner. The award is presented to a citizen who has demonstrated extraordinary service and achievement within the community; it is the highest honor given by the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce and is presented jointly with Duke Energy. Brady and Martin were recognized for not only the significant work done at their respective universities, but also for the unprecedented level of teamwork and collaboration that they have exhibited in working to make projects such as the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, Opportunity Greensboro, and the Union Square Campus a reality.”

Apparently, Opportunity Greensboro members hold the mistaken belief that Brady has “demonstrated extraordinary service and achievement within the community.”

I am having a very hard time imagining where that idea came from.

First though, let me clarify, while the award could be, in theory, given to any citizen, it just so happens that this time the citizens who ‘deserved’ it were both members of the Opportunity Greensboro cabal.

I have no beef with Harold Martin, I don't know him or his work, but the mere idea that the words community service and Linda Brady could be put together in a sentence without a negative separating them makes my skin crawl.

Apparently, you can severely damage several communities and yet still receive an award for outstanding work if, and here’s the catch, you benefit in some way the people who are giving out the award. So that raises the question: which benefits are being given to whom in such a way that Brady’s work would seem meritorious?

Let’s take a look at this “significant work done at their respective universities.” During Brady’s administration:

• The Glenwood fiasco
• The Wreck Center and its fee hike
• The UNCG3 / Paul Mason
• The unnecessary $12 million give back
• Raises for the highly paid
• Shrinking student numbers
• Academic Program Review Circus
• Alienation of HES donors and alumni
• Forced reorganization (twice!)
• Multiple new upper administration positions
• Massive loss of employment
• Underperforming nano program
• Ever shrinking Union Campus Initiative
• Demonstrated racism in UNCG police
• Wood frame housing subject to fire at Spartan Village
• 85% of faculty experience morale as a significant problem on campus
• Culture of bullying rampant in administration
• Rise & Fall of Learning Communities
• Faculty flight
• Staff disappearance
• Enormous increases in health care premiums & co-pays
• Increased teaching loads
• Lost course sections
• Wrestling program dissolved
• UNCG Magazine abandoned
• #36 on list of Fastest Growing Sugar Baby Schools
• Fallen off list of best places to work
• Jan Zink's fundraising impotence
• Tragic branding campaign #dsba
• Greatly increased police presence at BOT meetings

I could go on. And on. And on.

Now put that up against the benefits of the nano school and union square campus:

• Union square already twice reduced in size
• Currently at 85,000 square feet that will cost $90 million to build (a popular number as the rec center cost $91 million)
• Meanwhile, 500,000 square feet of unused space at Gateway East and Gateway North
• Nanoschool has currently produced four PhD graduates in 4.5 years at an outlay of $700,000
• Unfortunately, the outlay for those who dropped out was about $2 million
• In other words, this is a program that produced 4.5 students at $971,000 per degree)
• The nanoscience program was supposed to enroll 110 students (and the nanoengineering a further 110)…in nanoscience they seem approximately 100 short - makes you wonder about the University's prediction of 320 for the Dr. of Nursing to be offered at the Union Campus
• The JSSN cost $65 million to build and equip (odd that the rec center should be so much more expensive…)

I’m still waiting for the benefits from either of those projects to become clear to me.

What is clear to me is that Randall Kaplan, who is a member of Opportunity Greensboro is also part of the founding group for Capital Facilities Foundation, the group that purchased the rec center land in Glenwood and made it available to the university.

Here is what Brady has really done that has earned her this award:

Turned the university into a mechanism for real estate development.

It is clear that a lot of university money is being pumped into real estate in and around Greensboro and that some people benefit directly from the sale of that real estate, some benefit from the property value increases, some benefit by skimming, some benefit through kick backs for construction contracts…and some benefit from lying through their teeth while rubbing elbows with the Greensboro elite.

What are we positioning for here? Who is benefiting from all of these projects? I guess it could be a coincidence that despite the lived experience of thousands of people which indicate that Brady has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster, when that is placed by the side of hundreds of millions of dollars of student and taxpayer money being funneled into private hands that Opportunity Greensboro sees Brady as a hero, but I think not.

The poor bastards writing for Campus Weekly should be given hazard pay for having been made to handle this toxic material.

Jan's $100,000 Gift Basket Budget

Here’s a question I’d like to get an answer to (as opposed to all the others that I ask but that don’t get answered):

Is there anything that the university needs in order to continue to support its mission that costs less than $100,000?

The reason why I ask that is because $100,000 is the budget that Jan Zink has for purchasing gift baskets. And, well, it seems to me like there might have been some things that were in the lineup of priorities that we would be funding before we got down to gift baskets (or $150,000 for ice sculptures for that matter).

Now, maybe that wasn’t the entire amount that she asked for in the gift basket fund, so she’s feeling that she has tightened down too.

Here’s where things start to get fuzzy for me. We know that Jan doesn’t think that UNCG people give. Does she have the idea that UNCG people would if they thought they were going to receive a woven basket with an assortment of small cheeses? I think she may have our donors mistaken for rodents. Does she think our donors can’t find their own body wash or ground coffee? That the only reason they would give is because it will lighten their weekly shopping load a tad?

Here’s a gift basket that looks very nice for $39.95 – Jan could buy 2,503 of them with that budget. Are we sending out 2,503 gift baskets a year?

But maybe that’s not as fancy as the ones she orders. After all, she is the one who thinks that the appropriate décor for a donor function is an ice sculpture of a grand piano…because nothing says “we’re spending your donation wisely” like something that costs a lot and yet melts.

So, are we sending out “Tower of Treats” baskets from Harry & David at $149 a pop? That budget lets Jan “gift basket” Zink send 671 thank you baskets complete with smoked salmon, nuts, pears, and hopefully some explanation of why we thought they would want us to spend such a large part of their donation on a gift for them.

Meanwhile, we have students and staff who are well below the poverty line – with at risk housing and food shortages. We have buildings that have holes in the floors and soon much of the teaching technology in the classrooms will be removed and sold off. We have faculty using 7-year-old laptops and desks that stand up when a book is propped under one leg. We have field trips the students can’t afford to attend and doctor’s co-pays that break the bank.  We have staff who have been laid off, course sections that have been cancelled, library resources that have expired…and I could go on, but you get the picture.

I think that our donors give to UNCG because they love UNCG, not because they need a really complicated way to get a basket of candied fruit and cashews. Our donors want the personal touch, not the champagne treatment. If people aren’t giving, it’s because we’ve alienated them, not because they have been lured away by other universities’ giveaways. Our donors can tell when you care about them and when you are just trying to get their money. And you, Jan, are as transparent as plate glass.

UNCG people have a long tradition of giving more than they are asked and of giving because they care – and are cared for. You can’t buy your way into their hearts.

Your oil money doesn’t translate well here; maybe it’s time for you to just get on home to Tulsa.

Jan Zink Doesn't Like UNCG Alums

Jan Zink just hasn't been happy since leaving her cozy enclave in Tulsa, Oklahoma to come to Greensboro. It's enough to make a person want to throw themselves on their bear skin rug, ball up their little manicured hands, and pay somebody else to throw a fit for them.

Jan Zink was brought here to head up University Advancement. This means that her primary job is to develop and maintain relationships (of the positive kind!) that UNCG has with donors and to cultivate new ones. This is an especially important role given the push by the state to dry up funding to the university system as a whole. One of the problems is though, that Jan doesn't seem to understand the personal interactions that are such a vital part of creating new relationships and deepening existing bonds.

University Advancement at UNCG has been a very successful department and has been filled with people whose love for the university and deep involvement with the community has showed in the hours they have worked and in the connections they have sustained. Unfortunately, since Jan's arrival more than 50% of the department has disappeared either through layoffs, earlier-than-planned retirements, or departures in the interest of self-preservation.

When she arrived there were 51 people working to help build the university's future...now there are only 21.

The most recent losses:

• Lynne Bresko, Executive Director of Development who had worked for UNCG for 16 years will be leaving in April
• Judy Piper, served as Interim Vice Chancellor, and who had dedicated the past 8 years to the advancement of UNCG has resigned
• Rebecca LaPlante, a University Program Specialist had served UNCG in that capacity for 12 years has also resigned - the 12 years listed belies her actual commitment to UNCG which has been ongoing since her days as an undergrad

We have here 36 years of experience in the community (and as I said, this is still a gross underestimation because the immersion began long before these employment figures suggest) driven out by the toxic environment that Zink has created. And that's only three of the 30 people who are gone. I don't know how we would even begin to recover from this kind of wholesale devastation - not to mention the psychological toll this takes on those left behind.

Zink never learned the culture here, in fact it never even interested her. She thinks of us as country bumpkins and blames her difficulties in raising money on the quality of our donors:

"UNCG people don't give."

This has never been a problem before. I think UNCG people give and they give deeply. They just don't give to Zink. And this is because she has the personal touch of a black widow spider. Sure, you understand that they are part of nature and a have a right to live, but it's not a part of nature you want to get to know up close and personal and then set up a recurring donation with.

In her first year, she spent $150,000 on ice sculptures.

Her current budget allows for $100,000 in gift baskets.

Any time she has had to cut the budget, she takes it in personnel.

Let that sink in. 

We're not made from oil money, Greensboro is a different kind of place. Our connections are built with a personal touch not through frigid demonstrations of ostentatious wealth. Our donors give because they love UNCG not because they want a gift basket. The connections we have with those who support us are just that, connections - a bond created among people and place that makes UNCG something worth supporting. This runs from the biggest donor to the smallest contributor: all are welcome and all are part of the fabric of the university. 

Jan doesn't understand this and it is clear in the way she treats her people, in the way she treats those relationships, and in the amount of funding she has continually failed to raise. But she wants to lay the blame for all of those problems on the people who have given so much already: the staff and the donors.

UNCG people do give, Jan. 

Now, politely step aside so we can begin the work of healing the wounds you have inflicted.