Driving a Shelby Cobra to the Country Club

Call me old fashioned, but I've always thought that the French monarchy would have faired a lot better had they not been quite so ostentatious in their displays of wealth while the people in the street were starving.

I have to admit that I felt my heart sink when I saw the picture of Chancellor Gilliam and his wife in a Shelby Cobra on their way to their welcome reception at The Biltmore Forest Country Club. It's a bit different than when I took my Honda to Subway for lunch to celebrate the beginning of my employment at UNCG.

Appearances are important and first class flights, fancy cars, and country club receptions don't exactly demonstrate a presence in the trenches with the faculty and staff who are constantly being told to do more with less. I thought we were out of money? The old ball-and-chain Brady (who by the way we're paying for this year without requiring to do anything as lowly as working) was already making 11 times more than the maintenance and housekeeping staff, what are we spending now and why don't the economic hard times seem to hit those with the most cushion?

Faculty don't have phones in their offices because of budget cuts but the Chancellor is getting some extra staff for his residence. Say it isn't so. Even some symbolic cutting of luxury would go a long way toward sending the hopeful message: I am here because I want to be, not because it was the best way for me to get richer.

I've held my tongue, watched and waited, desperately optimistic, but it's getting hard to hang on to that. When I heard that Gilliam suggested it might be a good idea to reach out to the folks in Glenwood and get to know them, have a BBQ, I thought that was a good idea...or a good start (and something that has been a long time in the making). Now I wonder if he wouldn't mind taking a look at the UNCG community and recognizing that there's a lot there that could use some trust-building gestures.

Don't get me wrong, that's a sweet car, I'm not denying that, but I wonder if Gilliam has taken it by the staff food pantry recently.

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.

   

20 Money Saving Ideas for UNCG

Dear faculty, staff and students,

As we all struggle together to determine ways for UNCG to thrive in these times of continued budget shortfalls, my staff and I have worked hard to develop the following new policies.

1. Employees will be charged for units of heat absorbed by their bodies (or conversely for the units of air that have to be cooled given the heat they radiate) in any and all campus buildings they occupy during working hours. Just because you work here doesn't mean that the air temperature has to be modulated for free!

2. Henceforth all UNCG employees must supply their own toilet paper. After all, that's the most personal business that I can think of and, frankly, you should have thought of that before you left for work.

3. Departments will now need to pay for any capital letters they wish to use in printed materials as these letters require more ink and therefore cost the university money. This goes for any frivolous punctuation such as the semi-colon and the asterisk.*

4. Employees are not to use the letters U, N, C, or G after working hours, especially not for personal business which would be in direct conflict then to the interests of the university. That's our name, don't wear it out.

5. Electron offset forms must be filled out for any content sent via email that is not directly work related. Employee paychecks will be deducted for electron overage on a month to month basis.

6. No employee may use trash or recycling receptacles at work for personal refuse. Carry your lunch wrapper home with you. In fact, don't eat lunch unless you plan on deducting it from your vacation time.

7. Due to budget cuts, each department will now only be allowed one keyboard.

8. There will be no more self parking on campus. All parking will now be valet to be overseen by the new Vice Assistant Associate Chancellor of Parking. Remember to tip.

9. Should a member of the upper administration be confronted by a puddle or other daunting obstacle, the closest staff member should use their body as a bridge to shield the executive from the emotional stress of having to overcome the egregious difficulty.

10. All campus mail will be C.O.D.

11. No desk or work area may have more than one photo of a child or loved one. This will be overseen by the Director of Visual Representations, who is directly under the Vice Chancellor for Familial Management and External Relationships. And for God's sake, don't print the photo on the campus printer...which brings us to number 12...

12. Staff across campus will now share one printer. It is currently out of toner and you must supply your own paper and electrical current.

13. The Associate Sub Vice Chancellor for Writing Implements will be the primary billing agent for any pencil sharpening requests. Yes, you will be billed for the requests. There will be no actual pencil sharpening.

14. All requests for necessary office supplies must be filled out five years in advance via a form that is indicated by a broken link on the UNCG website.

15. Rather than offering all of these different 'sections' of 'courses' in 'majors' across campus, all students will now be enrolled in a single section offered once at the beginning of the semester. Faculty will be reduced to, approximately, one grossly underpaid adjunct.

16. Human Resources will be outsourced to Albania. All contact must be made by mail and will be returned unopened.

17. To reduce the costs associated with data management, all employee email will now be archived for no longer than 30 seconds.

18. Anyone with a last name longer than five letters will have an overage surcharge deducted from their pay.

19. Faculty and Staff senate meetings will be replaced with 'Donations Hour' allowing members who attend to leave the room only after emptying their pockets, wallets, and purses.

20. Christmas is cancelled.


Thank you for all you do for UNCG!

Sincerely,

Linda P. Brady

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*Administrative asterisks excepting.