The Owl Is Watching

On October 16, Provost Dana Dunn told the faculty at UNCG, “I would urge you that if you can give this a little time, information will come forward. Right now, you have very incomplete information. So do I.”

Susan Safran, Chair of the UNCG Board of Trustees followed this by saying, “When the evidence comes out, I hope you’ll understand the actions we took.”

The time has come that the truth must be told.

Provost Dunn, you have had two months since that statement to familiarize yourself with the situation. Chairwoman Safran, the evidence is out and it has only clarified the specious nature of the charges and the firings. 

The only conclusion that the faculty and staff at UNCG can draw from this is that they were lied to.

It may still be unclear what all of the motivations were for the lies, but that they have been told is not in doubt.

It is hard not to begin to wonder why Brady is protecting Paul Mason and why the Board of Trustees is protecting her. What does Linda Brady offer that is strong enough to hold together this melting mess that she created?

Has her openness to real estate development ‘for’ the university been sufficiently expansive to win her the support of ‘people who matter’?

I can only imagine that anyone else who had so monumentally failed in all that they had tried to do would be cut loose so quickly their head would spin. If Mason believed that the university relations office didn’t do enough to put a positive face on Brady’s continued flaunting and floundering, he can’t possibly believe his own little contribution to UNCG’s presence in papers has been anything short of disastrous.

Brady’s best hope at this point is that she will be forgotten, allowed to run out the clock and collect her handsome retirement. Mason is hoping he’s just elaborated his resume for further positions as hatchet man.

Rather than turning away and passing the damage on in the hopes that one day it will disappear of its own accord, let’s reclaim UNCG for its students, staff, and faculty. It starts by showing support – print the owl and display it somewhere, as your facebook profile picture, in the window of your car, or in the window of a sympathetic store.

There are fewer of them than there are of us and army of owls lets them know that we’re watching.

All I want for Christmas is a clean house.

The Real Costs of UNCG 'Leadership'

That sounds odd, doesn’t it? Chancelloring (and for that matter, Provosting) doesn’t really work as a verb and I’d say it’s a darn sight harder to figure out exactly which verbs go with the somewhat vague description as ‘leadership positions.’ What is all of this ‘leadership’ at UNCG costing the university?

Let’s take a look.

Position	Salary
Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs – Cheryl Callahan	$188,181
Associate Vice Chancellor, Human Resources – Edna Chun	$141,625
Vice Chancellor, Information Technology – James Clotfelter	$208,421
Associate Vice Chancellor, Safety & Risk Management – Rollin Donelson	$115,833
Associate Vice Chancellor, Information Technology – Robert Dunn	$162,280
Associate Vice Chancellor, Information Technology – Donna Heath	$162,280
Associate Vice Chancellor, University Relations[1]	$121,440
Assistant Vice Chancellor, Foundation Finance – Jill Hillyer	$93,459
Associate Vice Chancellor, Office of Research & Economic Development – Jerry McGuire	$166,290
Assistant Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs – Vicki McNeil	$136,620
Provost & Vice Chancellor – Dana Dunn	$300,000
Associate Vice Chancellor, Facilities – Jorge Quintal	$149,350
Associate Vice Chancellor, Finance – Steven Rhew	$163,893
Assistant Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs – Jim Settle	$136,620
Vice Chancellor, Business Affairs – Reade Taylor	$228,215
Associate Vice Chancellor, Information Technology – Gloria Thornton	$162,280
Associate Vice Chancellor, Business Affairs – Laura Young	$128,092
Vice Chancellor, Advancement – Jan Zink	$273,000
Chancellor, Linda Brady	$318,780
Vice Chancellor & Chief of Staff – Bonita Brown	$151,800
Associate Vice Chancellor, Auxiliary Services – Michael Byers	$127,285
Associate Vice Provost – Andrea Whitley	$87,085
Associate Vice Provost, Academic Technology Systems – Harold Bodenhamer	$80,960
Vice Provost – Alan Boyette	$221,486
Associate Vice Provost – Elizabeth Meeks	$78,936
Assistant Vice Provost – Leigh Olsen	$59,000
Associate Provost, International Programs – Penelope Pynes	$136,620
Total	$4,137,471

So, first thoughts:

Clearly whatever ‘chancellors’ do is worth more than whatever ‘provosts’ do, as there is a significant drop in the salaries awarded (with the exception of the top position…but that has Vice-Chancellor in the title, so it’s still consistent.)

Part of the difference between a Chancellor and a Provost is that the Provost deals with the academic side of the university. Obviously, that is something not nearly as important as whatever that other side of the university is…after all, it’s only: the reason the university exists.

And yet, the highest paid among those on this list are the people who get raises. Provost Dunn is earning $20,000 a year more than her predecessor, Dave Perrin. Why wasn’t $280,000 enough for a provost? Shouldn’t that $20,000 have been split into raises among the assistants in the office?

Meanwhile, the assistants to highest paid of these positions earn less than $50,000 a year.

Karen Anderson, Administrative Support Assistant with 11 years of service to UNCG is earning $36,824 a year.

Doris Deal, Administrative Support Associate, after serving at UNCG for 14 years is earing $38,171.

Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Cheryl Callahan has received $48k in raises over the last four years. This means that the amount of her raises alone have been greater than the entire salary of an employee such as Sheryl Williamson, an administrative Support Specialist in Career Services, a department that is under the umbrella of Student Affairs. Meanwhile, Williamson, despite 12 years of dedicated service to UNCG, has received less than a $1,000 raise.

Why do we seem to believe that the management of things is always deserving of better pay than the actual doing of those things?

We all live in the same week, with the same number of hours. How is it possible that in an institution whose goal is education, that we can determine that the value of the work done by one in any particular hour is worth 10 times more than the time of the other. Either the things that someone does are worth doing or they aren’t, if they aren’t let’s stop doing them and if they are, then lets start treating them that way.

This kind of gross salary differentiation creates a class system that clearly communicates the value of the human beings who people the university community. Those at the top have internalized their financial compensation as synonymous with their worth as human beings and proceed to treat those who make less as less valuable. The bullying that has become endemic at UNCG of the ‘lower’ class by the ‘upper’ class is no more than the manifestation of the belief that these financial divisions are actually reflections of the contributions that people make.

Paul Mason, Jan Zink, Kim Record, Bryan Terry (and others) treat those ‘below’ them in a manner consistent with the inflation of their egos by the overestimation of their value. It’s time that they learned their place as fellow human beings – not superior creatures - and that they walked a mile in the shoes of others.

That would be doing something bigger altogether.

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[1] This is the salary for Helen Hebert, who occupied the position before Paul Mason, Mason’s salary information has not been published yet.