1. The post I did last week on noise in public libraries was a hot discussion topic both on this blog and out in my neighborhood, so I called Nancy Ledeboer, Pima County Library Director, today to get some information about how local libraries are dealing with concerns over noise. As per normal when one speaks with a librarian, I learned something: Libraries are actually serving a broader range of the public than they did in the past, thus being more “public” than ever.

“We say we’re a public library here to serve everyone in the community,” Ledeboer said. “But the truth is what we were servicing in the past were people from middle class backgrounds who grew up in a culture of using the library.”

But now, she explained, libraries are drawing from all strata of the community because libraries offer more than books. The Internet changed the game in the ’90s, and people who could not afford access to a private computer – or lacked Internet access at home – came to the one free place where they knew they could find both computers and Internet access.

“A whole new group of people began coming to the library library looking for information,” Ledeboer said. “That’s a good thing – we’ve got more and more people acquainted with the library and what a library offers. But it did create a clash of sorts because so many people are using it.”

That clash is often about noise. Ledeboer said it has been an issue at many of the 27 branches in the library system, and each of the libraries is dealing with it in different ways.

“We’ve charged each of our libraries to create a quiet zone, and if they don’t have enough space for a quiet zone, then they are working to create a quiet time. “But frankly, some of our libraries are just too small. In that case, people need to approach a librarian if they feel they are being disturbed. Some people are hypersensitive to noise, and some people don’t know they’re being noisy so it is a matter of finding a find balance where people can all coexist in the libraries. We do have a code of conduct policy posted on our Website that says you’re not allowed to create a disruption that interferes with other people’s use of the libraries, but we don’t have specific ‘no cellphone’ policies.”

Ledeboer also said that the belief that fewer people are reading books because they only use the library for the computers or to hang out after school is a fallacy. She said books circulation is actually way up in the past few years when contrasted to before the time when libraries were community centers, and part of that is because when people come into a library branch to do research on a computer or participate in one of the job clubs or book clubs or get tutoring, they often leave with a book as well.

So, yes, libraries may be more noisy than in the past, but that is because libraries are, thanks to computers, Internet access and the myriad programs offers, actually living up to the “public” in their names in a manner that didn’t happen in the past. And that’s a great thing. See how much you can learn if you talk to a librarian?

2. Yet again, there was a study saying we’re killing ourselves with food. Actually, the report was about how more 60-somethings are disabled now than ever before and that disability is directly attributed to obesity. This is something that really gets on my last nerve because – surprise – we all have the ability to control what we eat. (Well, except for those people who have the syndrome where they eat in their sleep and all that.) We have the ability to get off our tail and go for a walk or something more strenuous. We have the ability to say no or go to food-addiction meetings to get help saying no. But we don’t. How many times do we have to hear that we are killing ourselves by eating this and drinking this and then eating this? With talk of health care all the rage, is anyone besides me wondering if we should put a limit on what a government plan would cover in regards to illnesses caused by obesity? Should healthy taxpayers have to pay for people to get insulin when their diabetes could be controlled with diet but those people refuse to control their food intake? Should we fine parents who let their children get obese? If you want help eating right and exercising, here’s an article you could read. And here is a clue: The sooner you start getting in shape, the better it is for you. It is harder to lose weight with every passing year and the damage is cumulative.

3. And speaking of eating …Thanksgiving is just around the corner and fellow religion blogger Karen Edmisten is asking, “Have you started your Thanksgiving tree?” If you don’t know what one is, check out her blog here. We used to make these when my kids were small and I’m thinking the idea needs to be revisited, especially in this year of loss. Too often we focus on what we don’t have … a Thanksgiving Tree is the cure for that.

4.  John Allen, reporter on all things Catholic and Vatican has come out with a new book, The Future Church: How 10 Trends are Revolutionizing the Catholic Church. In this blog post, he says that if he had to pick a motto for his book it would be “Designed to start arguments, not settle them.” Sounds like my kind of read. Anyway, he is inviting people to read the book and then meet in cyberspace for discussions — should be fun. (And maybe interesting to see who actually shows up.

5. And finally, if you want to do good while you’re searching the Web, add GoodSearch to your browser. You can pick any charity you want and they get funds from your searches. Share, and share alike is what I say.

Trying to clean off my desk this afternoon and came across two curiosities. The first is this article in Wired Magazine  about Thorkil Sonne, an IT worker in Denmark who decided a few years ago that people with autism and related conditions like Asperger’s would be great for jobs requiring total concentration and near-total recall —- jobs like software engineers.

In most countries, a diagnosis of autism means a lifetime of struggling with social and people skills. I know two young adults with high-functioning autism, both at the University of Arizona. In social situations, they stand out like clothed people at a nudist colony. They are kind and intelligent, but their obsessive focus on minute details in a conversation makes relating to them difficult.

No surprise to that, says Sonne, which is why most folks with an autism-spectrum disorder don’t fit in at many jobs – they don’t “do” social interaction. However, they do do persistence and structure and routine in a way that would drive many workers batty, which makes them perfect as software engineers. In 2004, Sonne founded Specialisterne (Danish for “specialists”), an IT consultancy firm that hires people with autism-spectrum disorders. These consultants work for places like Microsoft and Cisco, finding software errors missed by those companies’ designers, according to the Wired article.

The consultants do well, staying focused long after most of us with our 7-minute attention spans have switched gears and gotten distracted talking about last night’s episode of The Office. “This is not cheap labor, and its’ not occupational therapy,” Sonne is quoted as saying. “We simply do a better job.”

Item 2: Parents of students at the UA received a plea letter this week that looks like it is from the Alumni Association. It is actually from a “Final Exams Service Program” in Trenton, NJ, that partners with heave knows how many Alumni Associations to provide heavy-fat, high-sugar “care packages” for students during finals week. So, first point is, don’t they know we have an obesity epidemic among young people? And the second point is the tone of the letter. Take a peak inside the one I received:

Two students showed up to get their Care Packages. One beamed when she received her package. The other, whose family had not reserved a package, immediately used her cell phone and called Mom with a plaintive, “You didn’t send me a care package?”

First of all, why would the kid have shown up at the UA Alumni Association building to get a care package if her parents had not sent one? She wouldn’t have been notified. Secondly, I’ve received these letters before and they just been an offer (”You too can spend even more money on college!!!”), not a guilt trip. It seems odd, especially during this economic downturn, that any university would pair up with this business and allow pleas such as the following:

Because so many students receive Care Packages during exam time, it can hurt if a student is left out. This year, we have a solution to make sure every student feels supported at this critical time. The enclosed free gift card is our way to help. Please send it even if you don’t plan to reserve a Care Package. Of course, it will be more appreciated if it comes with food.

Of course! Good gravy. Parents have enough guilt as it is and they are paying through the nose to get their kid a degree and, in their minds (c’mon, admit it), that kid needs to buckle down during finals with or without the Pop-Tarts and Andy Capp Cheddar Fries.

I happen to send my kids my own version of a care package around exam time. There are homemade chocolate chip cookies, but then its fresh fruit or veggies and nuts and maybe a coffee card. I’ve done this for too many years to remember, since I tend to believe a good salad cures all ills and all greens should be washed down by chocolate. But I don’t like being guilted into thinking that if I don’t cough up $25 to $60 for an “Exam Survival Pack” or a “Wildcat Spirit Care Package” I’ll somehow be causing my offspring to feel excluded. We’re not talking 5-year-olds here, people, but young adults who (one would hope) have a sense of perspective. But maybe I don’t know as much about this age group as the Final Exams Service Program does. After all:

If you’ve sent (a care package) before, you already know how much it helped. If you haven’ts, you can be sure your student will appreciate receiving the same kind of support other classmates receive.

UA Provost Meredity Hay

It is hard to believe it has been a month since a University of Arizona faculty poll revealed that at least 31 percent, and possibly nearly 50 percent, of the voting faculty wanted Provost Meredith Hay fired. Time flies when you’re buried under textbooks.

During the past four weeks, while I’ve been building lessons for rascally high school freshmen and learning new terms like “constructive assertiveness” and “summative evaluation,” UA’s upper administration has been following up on President Robert N. Shelton’s promise to meet with faculty and improve communication. My e-mail inbox, once a veritable clearinghouse of faculty and department head concern over Hay, grew silent, leading me to wonder if Hay’s apology in a faculty senate meeting had made things hunky-dory in Wildcat Town. Apparently not, according to inquiries made yesterday and today.

“She dug herself a deep hole and she’s now trying to dig her way out of it,” said Lynn Nadel, UA Regents Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Strategic Planning and Budget Advisory Committee. “The general feeling I’ve gotten from speaking with the faculty who have attended the meetings is one of guarded – well, I wouldn’t even say optimism – it’s just guarded. I think she is sincere, but I’m not surprised people are skeptical. But to her credit, she’s been brave and gotten out there. She hasn’t run away.”

Not that some don’t want her to, still. This, from a department head who admits to being more than a little skeptical:

Robert’s gotten the word–from faculty, from administration, from faculty leadership–that the provost is arbitrary, incompetent, and personally impossible. “Never been a dean, never been a department head” is how she gets regularly characterized around here, by way of explanation for why she understands leadership, budgets, curriculum, and the management of a university so poorly.

UA President Robert N. Shelton

Indeed, Shelton held a meeting with various department heads on Sept. 15 – before the faculty poll – and was told (according to minutes obtained through a public records request for Shelton’s emails) that, of the four meetings Shelton had held prior to Sept. 15 with these department heads, “the meetings that were held with Dr. Shelton alone had a different tenor than those in which Dr. Hay was present as well. … in the perception of the Heads Representatives, there was little in the way of give and take dialog…”

Nadel said the big change since the faculty poll is the creation of a SPBAC subcommittee that is charged with making sure Hay’s my-way-or-the-highway method of faculty consultation is changed. The committee, called SPBAC 2012 in reference to the funding “cliff” anticipated in 2012 when the federal stimulus dollars go dry, is meant to increase communication both up and down the chain of command. It is a 15-member committee appointed by Nadel, with representation from staff, the student body and every major UA college, including the College of Humanities and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, both of whic have felt put upon since receiving 7 percent cuts to their budgets this year. Here’s Nadel:

Everyone still agrees (Shelton and Hay) will have to make decisions, but in the recent cuts it is like they got input too late in the process from the faculty to take advantage of the collective wisdom of the campus. This committee will ensure input early so that it isn’t us just getting the decisions they would recommend but rather we help them come up with options, help decide what are the priorities of the institution. Decision-making is not shared, no one argues with that, but the point of this committee is to institutionalize a mechanism that they have to have proactive discussions with faculty early in the process.

Also, it is to make sure this change in behavior on (Shelton’s and Hay’s) part is real. We worked hard to create some space for them to change because the alternative – trying to get rid of them – is too horrific. I think they know we’re serious. They’d have to be stupid not to understand they came very close to the edge. This was a real public thrashing. I hope they don’t get lulled into a sense of false security about what is happening here. This committee is meant to hold their feel to the fire.

Holding Shelton and Hay’s feet to the fire, however, doesn’t mean looking to the past, but focusing on future cuts, Nadel said. While there’s no doubt that the money that is being poured into translational medicine and environmental sciences is coming out of the hides of other colleges, he said, but it isn’t as bad as some people have made it out to be.

“The $12 million is misleading,” he said. “That is over a number of years, not at once. But yes, they made a $2.6 million cut in permanent funding over and above what they had to do to meet the $19 million in reduced state funding. We know that’s a flash point. They will defend it as necessary for the success of the whole university. It added to the total amount that had to be cut campus wide. In principal, they could have given smaller cuts and that differential investment couldn’t have been made.”

But, Nadel said, while a 7 percent cut equates to cutting 1 out of every 14 faculty members, that cut doesn’t equate to Shelton and Hay saying they want to get rid of a college.

“If you want to get rid of a college, you close it, you don’t just cut its budget,” he said. “Look, we lost six out of 36 faculty in psychology and we’re not getting them back. That’s one-sixth of our faculty, not one-fourteenth, and we teach more students than any unit on campus. And 1/14th is the worst-case scenario, because the cuts can come in other positions. They aren’t trivial cuts, they are forcing some hard decisions, but it isn’t like they are the only hard decisions.”

Arizona Board of Regents President Ernest Calderón

Arizona Board of Regents President Ernest Calderón is keeping a close eye on all these changes. He’s been down to the UA at least four times in the past four weeks for meetings with Shelton, Hay, faculty leaders and just about anyone who calls and says they want to meet, he said this morning.

The Provost apologized and she’s going around meeting with colleges – kind of a road show – and I’m told she’s taking responsibility for being rude and being brusque. I’m hearing some good things, but the question is, will she walk the walk? It’s one thing to say, I should not have talked to you that way, or I should have asked for your input before I made these decisions, but it’s another thing to see if there’s real change. When this comes up the next time, how will she do? That’s what I’m interested in. She’s told me in a very heartfelt way that she is sorry for this. And I said, ‘Great, do better.’

Ultimately this falls into Robert’s lap. If she goofs up again, it will be his responsibility. But this isn’t over. I’m going back down there next week. I’m still trying to sift the fact from the fiction, hear all the sides. People need to know that Earnie is going to keep coming back, and keep coming back, and keep coming back to see if things are working. I don’t care if people disagree with each other – it’s a university, of course they’re going to disagree – but they need to get to where they can work together down there and treat each other with respect.

For folks who think the problem is just in Arizona, the New York Times has this piece on how all universities are trying to do “less for more.” Granted, the unhappiness on the University of Arizona campus isn’t about budget cuts, but rather, how President Robert N. Shelton and Provost Meredith Hay are going about those cuts. More on all that tomorrow, when I’m not under the gun in my pursuit of further education and the job opportunities that will bring. For now, read the times piece, especially if you have college-age (or nearing) kids. Forewarned is forearmed.

UPDATE: The ASU State Press has an update on the suicide incident this  morning here.

This sad, breaking news from the ASU student newspaper: A graduate student committed suicide at 11:40 a.m. in the College of Design South building. The State Press is reporting via Twitter and their Website that the building is on lockdown after the student shot himself inside a professors office. Heartbreaking. Keep tuned to the State Press for further developments, but, in the meantime, think about this:

National Public Radio has been running a series of broadcasts on the increase in mental distress among today’s college students. You can view today’s broadcast here. You’ll hear how more and more of our college students are depressed, stressed and not dealing with life very well. Part of it is they seem to think they have to be perfect – not really surprising considering they are products of the most-involved (some say overinvolved) parental generation of all times.

So, if you know a college student, talk to them – and listen. These kids need to feel like they are not alone. Case in point: Yesterday, at church, I met a new kid, freshman from out of town. I talked to her about her classes, etc., and at some point I said if she got lonely, she could come over to our house for a meal. I was surprised to see her face light up so instantly (my cooking isn’t that good!) and even more surprised when she said, “They just think we can do this on our own, you know? Everyone thinks we’re ok, but sometimes we just need advice on how to handle all these changes.”

The words just blurted out of her mouth, it was like she’d just been waiting for someone – anyone – to notice that she was 18, in a new city, adjusting to hard classes and major demands and more freedom than she knew what to do with and peer pressure and professor pressure and God knows what else. It hurt to watch.

They aren’t as OK as we think they are, these young people crowding our supermarkets and our roads. We need to pay attention to that.

Cute pigs who CANNOT give you the Swine Flu

They aren’t really broadcasting this at UA, but according to my UA-student daughter, a number of people are out sick with the flu in Wildcat town, some of them with H1NI.

Clare, who began running a high fever last night and started feeling sick “all over,” called UA Campus Health Services this a.m. to get an appointment so she could get a doctors note that would allow her to miss classes (some professors require this). She was told she couldn’t come in because Health Services is trying to reduce the number of people exposed to the flu. This is probably part of UA’s pandemic plan some of which is based on the CDC’s recommendations for universities in dealing with H1N1.

A nurse administered a health survey to Clare over the phone and pronounced her sick with the flu, then gave her a lecture about how “contagious and viscous this strain is” without saying it was swine flu. She prescribed some medicine to reduce the symptoms, especially the massive headache, then explained how Campus Health Services sent off samples (of body fluids, I’m guessing) from people early in the semester who came in sick and “they tested positive for H1N1.”

Students are supposed to stay away from classes until they are free of fever for 24 hours without the use of Tylenol, which, Clare said the nurse said, could be anywhere from three to seven days from the onset of symptoms. I’m wondering if the overall GPA of the UA will be down considerably this semester from students not being able to keep up with work when they are missing so many days of school. Clare says she’ll be able to keep up with things by viewing class lectures online – once her head stops pounding.

Backtracking to try to figure out where Clare may have picked up the germ is difficult: it could have been anywhere in town. But she said someone in her French class was coughing last week, as was someone in the choir she sings with. Upwards of 30 people were exposed by those two people when Clare was exposed – not counting all the other people they exposed in their other classes at UA. Clare started feeling sick yesterday, in the Dallas airport, so she exposed everyone on the plane as she flew back to Tucson, although she said she tried to hold her breath as much as possible for the whole flight. Of course, she has two roommates who will be exposed, and they will continue to go to classes until they feel sick, by which time they may have exposed more people. And thus the flu virus – H1N1 or the “regular” – travels on.

St. Peters Basilica, Vatican City; image courtesy scrapetv

The religion world was all atwitter yesterday when the Vatican announced that members of the Anglican Communion who want to become Catholic will be able to do so while still being, basically, Anglican. People have wondered, what does God Blogging think about this interesting development? Well, here goes. You might want to grab a cup of coffee.

According to Cardinal William J. Levada, the head of the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Anglicans (Episcopalians in the U.S.) will soon be able to join fully with Rome while “preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony.” He said the move to create “personal ordinariates” was to “regularize” something that was happening anyway.

In regular English, that means that what has heretofore been done on a case-by-case basis and required the shedding of all things Anglican to happen, will now be done en masse, with the possibility of whole congregations being absorbed into Catholic dioceses while they retain their style of worship and spirituality.

It also means that all the Anglicans who’ve felt marginalized, irritated, betrayed or furious at the Anglican Communion’s ordination of women and openly homosexual bishops now have a place to go. And according to Levada, they’ve asked to come to Rome.

Converts will have to make professions of faith to the truth of the Catholic Church’s teaching and the primacy of the pope (nits that split them from Rome years ago in the first place), but they can keep the Book of Common Prayer and their really cool choirs, all without having to deal with those pesky women priests or openly gay clergy. (They’ll still deal with plenty of closeted gay clergy, of course, because although Catholics operate under a don’t-ask, don’t-tell motto in Holy Mother Church, everyone in the pews can tell, even when the priest himself is unaware.)

Do not misunderstand the gravity of this move. We’re not talking an Episcopalian here or an Anglican there and we most especially need to understand that this exception wasn’t done primarily with lay people in mind. This is a clergy-driven process, with Levada saying between 30 and 40 Anglican bishops have “been in dialogue” with Rome about unifying while keeping their traditions. Most importantly, the Anglicans want to keep their own clergy who, diligent readers of God Blogging will recall, are frequently married. Married clergy are a no-no for Catholics – at least normally.

That is Problem No. One: The inconsistency in the Catholic Church’s teaching on life-long celibacy for its all-male clergy. I’ll let super-productive Catholic writer Woodeene Koenig-Bricker explain, as she did so clearly on Face Book yesterday (who said social networking ain’t got religion?):

I find the “mixed message” to be upsetting. It’s okay to be a married priest if you don’t start out Catholic, but it’s not okay to be a married priest if you begin as Catholic. … Either priests can be married or they can’t. Saying that some priests can be married and some can’t is sending a dreadfully inconsistent message. … This decision is going to have some major fallout in the future. If someone feels called to both marriage and priesthood, why wouldn’t they first become an Episcopal priest and then come to the Catholic rite? They can have both vocations if they take that route, but if they choose Catholic priesthood first, they have to deny their calling to marriage. .

Couldn’t have said it better myself. In fact, I said as much more than 10 years ago when I was covering the conversion of an Episcopalian priest to Catholicism after he was assigned to a parish in the Fort Worth Diocese. He, along with a smattering of other Episcopalian priests across the country who converted following an uptick in the ordination of women in the Anglican Communion, was pushed to Rome’s side of the aisle not because he (ta-da!) saw the virtue in the papacy but because he believed scripture forbid the ordination of women.

I interviewed a number of Catholic priests who complained then that they viewed this acceptance of married clergy converts to be an affront to the more than 25,000 Catholic priests who’ve left priesthood in the past four decades because they felt called to both marriage and priesthood (History buffs and fellow God geeks will recall that married clergy was allowed for centuries in the Catholic Church and indeed, the man we claim was our first pope, Peter, was married.) Additionally, they said the inconsistency was difficult to explain to the average kid who came inquiring with questions about the Church’s entrenched stance on celibate clergy when he’d just sat in Mass celebrated by an married Episcopalian-cum-Catholic priest.

So, the whole married priest thing is Problem No. 1, but Problem No. 2 is more concerning to me. That centers on the concept of conversion and my belief that rarely (if ever) does true conversion come as a result of being pissed off. If it did, I would have crossed over to the Anglicans years ago. But, in spite of my belief that some women are called to priesthood and that celibacy should be optional and that artificial birth control inside of marriage can be a moral choice, God keeps me Catholic and, perhaps shockingly to some, keeps calling me to deeper relationship inside a Church that makes me crazy sometimes.

Of course, that’s just anecdotal, personal evidence of how conversion doesn’t come from a place of anger. But think about these “disaffected” Anglicans. They feel betrayed by their church, and/or they disagree/doubt the movement of the Spirit in their church. If they think they’ll find it all peaches and cream in Rome, they are wrong. There’s more to becoming Catholic than just thinking, “Well, at least they don’t ordain women and consent to homosexual unions.” And if you’re coming over because you’re mad, well, chances are, you’ll still be mad.

Reading between the lines of Levada’s announcement yesterday, it sounds as if the personal ordinariate (with rules about implementation coming in a month or so) will create an Anglicized liturgy within the Latin, or Western, rite of the Catholic Church. It won’t, in other words, create an entirely new rite, like the 17 Eastern rites currently in union with Rome. Those churches follow ancient liturgical traditions of the East based in their culture (Greek, Marionite, Melkite, etc.), while being in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church and placing themselves under the pope’s authority. The disaffected Anglicans will do much of the same – follow their liturgical and spiritual traditions while assenting to Rome, so the “there is no new rite” might be more semantics than anything else.

Levada said this is about “unity in diversity,” which plays well as a sound bite but not so well to the other folks who’ve wanted unity in diversity, like, say, nuns who are currently being investigated by the Vatican for not being “traditional” enough or those priests who left to marry. As religion writer and NY Times commentator David Gibson says, “For a church whose leadership has earned a reputation for reprimanding liberal Catholics who color outside the lines, these developments could be more than a bit frustrating.” Ya think?

You can tell that those supporting this move bend right and, sadly, they aren’t being very polite about their support. Rather, they’re showing their rude colors in comments about the Archbishop of Canterbury and the entire Anglican Communion. Example here and here and, shockingly because it comes from someone in the normally polite and sane Order of Preachers, here.

Interestingly enough, a lot of these folks are the ones who want to drag the Catholic Church back to the “smells and bells” times of pre-Vatican II, and yet the only reason these “personal ordinariates” work is because of Vatican II and its subsequent production of the new Code of Canon Law (Canon 372 to be specific).

Best case scenario for this new event: Everyone sees this as a step toward unification of the splintered Christian churches and plays nice. Worst case scenario: People are confused, particularly about married priests, nasty battles over church land and property ensue, and those remaining in the full Anglican Communion (including most U.S. Episcopal churches) feel slapped in the face in spite of years of ecumenical efforts. Time will tell.

If you want more info, here’s a great video analyzing the change, here’s a response from the Episcopalians in the U.S. and here’s some thoughts from a Dominican priest in Tucson.

Zachary Christie is now a free boy – sort of. The 6-year-old won’t have to spend 45 days in an alternative school for troublemakers, but he’ll still be suspended from first grade for 3 to 5 days for his “crime” of bringing his Cub Scout camping utensil to school.

One of the Boy Scouts all-purpose camping utensils

Zachary – who you can see here in a film he did last year titled “What is my job??” – is obviously a hardened criminal who wanted to stab someone with the knife from his combo fork-knife-spoon Cub Scout tool. Or, maybe he was just a 6-year-old boy excited about showing the coolest thing since video games to his friends.  But due to zero tolerance policies at his schools (and oh so many other schools), the administrators believed they had no choice but to suspend the kiddo because the district policy for the Christina School District in Delaware bans all knives “regardless of possessor’s intent.”

And here’s where critical thinking comes in. I’m currently in a teacher education program, preparing for life after journalism as a state-certified high school teacher. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve come across the term “critical thinking” in my reams of reading for my classes. The texts emphasize that teachers must help students develop critical thinking skills and that teachers must be “reflective” critical thinkers. We aren’t supposed to make knee-jerk decisions because, well, those kinds of decisions rarely take into consideration all the facts.

Instead, we’re supposed to carefully observe a situation, give our observations some critical thought, then arrive at the best answer to a problem. We’re encouraged to think not only of the short-term consequences of our actions (little boy learns to never bring sporkife to school), but also the long-term effects (little boy spends 45 days in alternative schools for hooligans learning all sorts of negative skills from the experts of the mean streets).

This critical thinking helps teachers and other school officials arrive at the most prudent decision for any particular situation, and (bonus!!) the modeling of such critical thinking helps students learn to think critically, examining not only short-term gains (popularity) but also long-term consequences (detention).

So tell me, how do zero tolerance policies reflect critical thinking? Those of you who answered, “They don’t” can move to the front of the class. These policies came about in part because of school shootings and in part to deal with drugs on campus. But the problem with them is they ignore everything educators know about child development – especially early child development – and they leave no wiggle room for thinking critically about a particular situation.

Sure, we don’t want weapons or drugs at school, but we have to use our brains to tell the difference between a Cub Scout “weapon” and a machete and we have to moderate our “punishments” in the proper manner. How about just telling Zachary, “Hey, buddy, that is a very cool thing, but the knife is sharp and someone could get hurt, so we can’t have that at school. I’ll keep it here and we can call your mom and she can pick it up.” Then, if he brought the verboten item to school again, officials would know there’s a problem, bring in the parents and school counselor and try to figure out an appropriate discipline.

That course takes a lot more time (and thought) than just saying, “Page two of the handbook says ….” but any critically thinking human being can see it is the right thing to do.

Ironically, the Delaware Legislature tried unsuccessfully last year to make disciplinary rules more flexible so local boards could modify the “terms of expulsion” on a case-by-case basis, according to reporting by the New York Times. That attempt came after a third grader was expelled for a year (!!!) because her grandmother sent a birthday cake to school with a knife to cut it.

Folks who enforce zero tolerance rules are folks who’ve skipped right over the critical-thinking advice in the teacher education classes. They are like lemmings running off a cliff in a misguided attempt to “keep schools safe.” But in that attempt, they’re making those safe schools look awfully stupid.

From the comments on yesterday’s post about the staged reading The Laramie Project; 10 Years Later, a thank you to those who attended:

On behalf of the rest of the cast and crew of Laramie Project 10 Years Later, thanks to all who came to see the performance last night. As an actor, I have to say, this was by far the most powerful theatrical experience I have had in a long time, particularly because of the warm reception we received from the audience.

Matthew Shepard via wikipedia

Eleven years ago, early October found me crying as I sat in my home office writing my weekly column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The subject was Matthew Shepard and how he had been picked up in a gay bar by two young men who then drove him to the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming, tied him to a fence in the freezing weather, stripped him of some of his clothing, and beat him to within an inch of his life. Then, they left.

The 21-year-old Shepard was discovered 18 hours later by a passerby, still alive, but in a coma. He would die six days later, but when I was writing the column, he was still hanging on in a hospital, suffering massive brain damage from being pistol whipped by his attackers. I normally don’t cry when I write, but I was so angry that I could do nothing except cry and pound my outrage onto my keyboard. Shepard was attacked simply because he was gay. Why? I kept thinking. Why?

My then 10-year-old daughter arrived home from school that day, saw my red eyes and asked what was wrong. I explained what had happened to Shepard.

“They left him all alone?” she asked, seeming to have skipped right over the fact that Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson had beat Shepard so severely.

“Yes,” I said.

Her next words have stayed with me, and return every October when I remember Shepard’s parents and their indescribable loss. She asked: “Didn’t they know he would want his Mommy?”

An innocent question from someone who couldn’t imagine what it was like to be 21, what it would be like to be living where you wouldn’t be seeing your mom every day. But she could imagine was that any child in pain would want help. And in her 10-year-old world, help meant Mommy.

What Shepard wanted was the last thing McKinney and Henderson cared about. At least that’s how it appeared to me. My knowledge of their mind set was limited, but tonight, everyone in Tucson has the chance to find out what Shepard’s murderers were thinking by going to the free presentation of The Laramie Project – Ten Years Later; An Epilogue.

The staged reading is the final chapter of the original The Laramie Project. Right after Shepard’s murder, a theater company descended upon the town to conduct interviews with the townspeople. The play that came out of those interviews a year after Shepard’s death was The Laramie Project, which has become one of the most performed plays in the past decade. Lacking in that play, however, were the voices of Shepard’s parents or killers, which the epilogue adds.

The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, will be performed in UA’s Centennial Hall as it is simultaneously performed in more than 100 other theaters in all fifty states, Canada, Great Britain, Spain, Hong Kong and Australia (see the links above for all the details of how the project is managing all this). It revisits what has happened in Laramie since the original play and how Shepard’s death still affects the community. There will be an interactive web cast connecting the various sites during the performance, which starts at Centennial Hall at 7 p.m. It is free and open to the public, but Centennial Hall only seats about 1,000 people, so folks interested in attending might want to get there early.

Anyone who cares about a civilized society should go. Anyone who wonders how hate thrives in ignorance should go. And anyone who has ever thought that a person’s differences deserve a violent response, or wondered how anyone can forgive such violence, should go.

Are you interested in learning how investigative reporters get the goods on public officials and figure out who is

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio

doing what with your tax dollars? If so, get ye over to the University of Arizona tomorrow night and hear from two of the best.

Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin, who together won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting in April, will be speaking about investigative journalism at 7 p.m. Thursday in room 211 of UA’s Education Building. They won the Pulitzer for a five-part series investigating the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Their work demonstrated how Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s near single-minded focus on detaining and arresting illegal immigrants in his county had resulted in a lack of enforcement of other crimes. The public, in other words, was paying taxes for slower response times to any number of 911 calls while Arpaio directed those funds to hunting down illegal immigrants.

Timing is everything, and today the Wall Street Journal is reporting today that the Obama administration is now limiting Arpaio and his deputies’ ability to use federal immigration law to arrest suspected illegal immigrants.

Gilbin is a UA grad and Gabrielson attended the school before beginning his award-winning journalism career. You can read all about the men here, but don’t pass up the chance to hear them speak in person, especially if you want to learn how reporters keep an eye on government for the rest of us.

A college student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison doing what college students do with chalk.

A handful of University of Arizona faculty have taken up the cause of Jacob Miller and Evan Lisull, posting on open letter to UA President Robert N. Shelton asking him to drop “administrative action” against the two UA students who were charged with criminal damage for writing with sidewalk chalk on the UA campus last week.

The letter is posted at Chalk is Speech and is signed by eleven faculty hailing from the new School of Government and Public Policy and the departments of Gender and Women’s Studies, Geography and Development, Spanish and Portuguese and UA’s world-renowned Creative Writing Program, which, just an aside, rejected yours truly when she applied for the MFA program a couple years ago. (Not that I’m bitter or anything.)

The open letter compliments Shelton for dropping the criminal charges against the UA students, but says he’s making a further mistake by referring their cases to the Dean of Students office. The letter claims that transferring the case to DOS actually increases “the jeopardy faced by the students” for what the faculty argue is a  rightful expression of free speech.

Under the criminal system, the University would be required to present evidence and witnesses for rebuttal and would be required to meet the threshold of proving the guilt of these students “beyond a reasonable doubt.” To date, UAPD has demonstrated no evidence that even approaches this threshold. (As of yet, no evidence beyond “unnamed sources” as been presented to actually tie these students to said infractions.) We note that the standard of guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” does not exist for those charged in a Academic Code of Conduct hearing. Instead, the Dean of Students must merely determine that “it is more likely than not that a violation of a Student Code of Conduct has occurred” (5-403 (C) 6), and the students have no right during this procedure to challenge the purported witness(es) who are said to have contacted UAPD.

The whole problem with this chalking case is that the consequence has been meted out inconsistently. Prior chalking events, i.e., social and religious clubs announcing their events in chalk, have never resulted in disciplinary action. Ergo, this appears – maybe ’tisn’t, maybe ’tis – to be a case of retribution for specific chalking. To wit: Miller and Lisull were complaining that not only the Legislature, but Shelton, is destroying the university with budget cuts and layoffs.

“It was selective,” said Roger Hartley, an associate professor in the School of Government and Public Policy and one of the eleven who signed the online open letter. “Other students have written messages in chalk on campus, be it to advertise an event in a dorm or whatever, but these students are the only ones who have been charged for what is, essentially, political speech. If they wrote on the walls, fine, give them a warning, make them clean it up, maybe even send them to the student judiciary if it was clear they violated the rules with impunity. But that isn’t clear at all.”

Lisull is a double major in poli sci and economics and kick-butt blogger who analysis data on everything from crime statistics to the uses of the Student Fee. I’m not sure if Hartley knows Lisull is a great blogger, but he did find out that Lisull was “one of ours” in the School of Government and Political Science and that was part of the reason he signed on to the open letter.

“If I can teach about free speech and law and then have one of my students arrested for political speech, I should be willing to stand up for him the way he is standing up for us at the university regarding the Legislature and the budget cuts,” he said.

This chalking issue continues to gain steam because of (wait for it …) a lack of effective communication by the administration. That ineffective communication was one of the big complaints that was raised in last week’s faculty poll. There’s a pattern here, folks.

So maybe what needs to happen is Shelton et. al, should find out exactly what happened on the days of the chalking and find out how it got so blown out of proportion. Then, hat in hand, he should admit the obvious – that mistakes were made – and stop the referral of Lisull and Miller to the Dean of Students. No other students have ever been slapped on the wrist so harshly for chalking … only the two who criticized the administration in chalk. It’s bad, bad PR for a university in desperate need of some good PR. How could Shelton turn this around? Let me offer a humble suggestion:

“Hey,” he could say, “I support free speech on a university campus as much as the next guy. I was gone when these incidents happened or it never would have gotten this far. We made some mistakes because, frankly, we’re all a little freaked out about the continual slice-and-dice procedure being demanded of us by the Legislature and, well, there’s that pesky faculty confidence issue as well. So, we’re going to start fresh and Mr. Lisull and Mr. Miller have agreed to offer free art lessons to kids on the south side for three hours this Saturday in lieu of going to see the Dean of Students. And from henceforth and forevermore, here are the rules about chalking. You can do this, this and this, but never this. If you do the latter, you will get sent to the Dean of Students. End of story. Now go back to class, you little ankle biters.”

Part of the reason Shelton needs to do this is for good will – there’s just not enough of it on campus right now. But the other reason he should do this is because Shelton needs Lisull. Stick with me.

I don’t know Miller outside of the one interview I did with him, so I can’t comment on his brainiac creds, but I’ve spent some concentrated time with Lisull. When I first met him to talk about blogging/reporting projects, I had three thoughts: 1. He must never sleep; 2. He is the poster child for why the “soft sciences” should get funding at UA because he’s evidence majors outside the College of Science also produce deep, critical thinkers, and; 3. I wonder if he’d be interested in meeting my daughter. (You know us mothers and our matchmaking.)

The guy is thoughtful, witty, energetic, polite and really, really, really intelligent. He is definitely not cut out of the typical college cloth. (For one thing, I’m pretty sure he’s a Libertarian. For another, he’s already won $10,000 in a national college blogging contest for his in-depth reporting.) He’s an out-of-the-box thinker that could be used to help save the university.

Instead of sending him to be spanked at the Dean of Students’ office; Shelton should pick his brain about possible solutions to UA’s budget problems and/or send him up to lobby the Legislature. Just an idea, but I think its one Shelton should consider.

Survey image courtesy of Flickr user roboppy

As promised yesterday, here’s the dope on how the University of Arizona faculty poll regarding confidence in President Robert N. Shelton and Provost Meredith Hay may show more faculty disapproval of the central administration – or at least of Hay – than one might gather from simply looking at the raw numbers. This comes courtesy of an interview with a patient and thoughtful Lynn Nadel, who is a UA Regents Professor of Psychology (among other things) and one of the faculty leaders who developed the poll and is helping slog through the written responses that were not tabulated by computer.

As reported by the dead-tree media and yours truly, the poll shows that only 31 percent of faculty eligible to vote in the poll actually did. The problem with that number, Nadel said, is that “eligible faculty” include the retired tenured faculty and “we have no way of knowing how many of them voted.” The only thing the faculty leadership can go on is past participation by emeriti faculty in various votes (i.e. casting ballots for Faculty Senate contenders) is slim to none.

So, if one assumes, as the faculty leaders think they probably should, that few if any of the 750 emeriti faculty voted, the “eligible voters” number drops to about 2,000 active faculty members. Then (stay with me!) if you also account for the fact that the poll had problems getting to people and once it did get to them, they had problems voting due to computer glitches, the number of “eligible voters” could have dropped even further. Meaning, Nadel said, that the 858 people who voted might actually represent a response rate closer to 40 percent, not 31, and maybe even up to 50 percent.

“We didn’t think to put a box on the poll that emeriti faculty could have checked to identify as such, which would have helped,” said Nadel, with an oh-well-next-time shrug.

Regardless, 31 percent response is “a non-trivial number of people” he said. This is confirmed by the ever-helpful David Cuillier, UA assistant professor of journalism and database reporting guru. (Let us pause for a moment here while journalists who’ve been helped by Cuillier pay their respects by bowing in the direction of the UA School of Journalism.) Cuillier was one of the faculty and department heads who contacted me Tuesday to politely say I might not know what the heck I was writing about. Cuillier’s analysis:

… a 31 percent response rate is pretty typical today in polling, and a 50 percent response rate would be great. …I’ve done a fair amount of survey research, including national phone surveys and surveys of specific populations, and 31 percent is pretty usual nowadays. I think you can get better response rates with a population like this (UA faculty) through multiple contacts and a longer polling time, but a growing amount of research indicates that 31 percent is not a problem and does not hurt the results.

The bigger question isn’t the response rate but rather the technique for recruiting people to fill it out. If the method was sporadic (e.g., some departments not hearing about it in time), then that would be more of an issue because some particular voices might not be heard. Overall, though, I don’t think the methodology is problem with this survey. If there are folks who think the results do not represent the sentiment of the faculty, then they can do their own survey to replicate this. I imagine they would get similar results.

Nadel said he thinks the poll is open to multiple interpretations and was careful to stress that his viewpoint about what it meant was his alone. That said, he thinks one message came through “loud and clear.”

“Whatever position one had on the actual decisions regarding funding cuts, there was a general dismay in the faculty over the level of communication,” he said. “That lack of communication brings a loss of trust and, in the end, the decisions are difficult to understand absent full detailed information behind them.”

Whoa, Nellie, is what the UA administration would say. Stephen MacCarthy, VP for External Relations said last week that the President and Provost have bent over backwards with memo after monthly campus memo to get their ideas across.

“Well,” Nadel said, “I know Steve MacCarthy, and he’s a smart guy, but there is an issue of interpretation. I believe they feel they’ve tried to communicate but there is effective communication and not so effective communication. So now is there a problem because they think they are communicating effectively, but the faculty has not been able to be effective in communicating to (UA administrators) that they aren’t communicating effectively. There has been a lack of transparency about why certain decisions are being made and the people who are upset are not just the people who’ve gotten the short end of the stick.”

Nadel, who had met with Hay a few hours before meeting with me, does not belong to the “hang ‘em up by their toes” group. He doesn’t believe Shelton and Hay are out to get anyone and concedes that they’ve got to consider multiple audiences whenever they open their mouths: the Arizona Board of Regents, the Legislature, the Governor, the campus. He recognizes the budget realities and knows the UA duo has to pay serious attention to those realities. (For those who’ve been living in a cave, the budget reality is: Arizona is broke)

“Still, even in a situation as tough as the situation we are in, it is possible to do a good job communicating, and this poll is a big time warning message that they haven’t,” the professor said.

Nadel was circumspect when asked if this poll was more about Hay than Shelton.

“She has her strengths and her weaknesses, just like all of us,” he said. “She’s a strong, gutsy, courageous person. That said, I think (Shelton) has become increasingly aware of her weaknesses. Does he have the wherewithal to work with her on improvement? I hope so. I think his memo shows awareness in that, you’ll notice, he is addressing larger groups while she is meeting with smaller ones.”

Nadel said it would be bad idea to oust either Shelton or Hay during this time of budget crisis.

“I don’t support that because the price of going in that direction is really high,” he said. “I believe they deserve a chance to prove they heard the faculty. In the end, all of us should be about what is for the good of the institution, and I think they are. But we have to see if they can communicate that.”

Shelton’s a smart man, and seemed, in his memo, to be admitting that there were some difficulties and those needed to be borne by him and Hay.

Many people on campus are frustrated.  Many feel that they have not been heard.  Others feel that the Provost and I should have provided more detail on how we planned to approach the differential cuts that most (though not all) believe are the best way to tackle the enormous challenge before us. For some, personality and personal communication style are the issues. (Emphasis mine.)

To truly show that they “get” the communication issue, Nadel said Shelton and Hay would have to forthrightly address what really has faculty and department heads worried – and it isn’t just that they are afraid of losing their departments.

“We become academics because we have a deep sense of what a university is,” Nadel said. “This isn’t an idea that started a few years ago. This is a 700-year-old idea, that a university preserves and enlarges human values. It is the life of the mind, but more. And it is that sense that the university at its core is being squeezed that is causing the angst. It’s fear that the essential core of what a university is, is being sacrificed on the corporate altar. The people who pay our salaries (the Legislature) seem to have a restrictive view of what a university is – as just a place to train people to get jobs. But a university is more than that. And the undercurrent of anxiety and anger is at least part about faculty wanting to know that (Shelton and Hay) are committed to protecting and preserving what a university is.”

Nadel said a bunch of other insightful things, like how the people in the sciences – who have more leverage because they draw in more grants – need to stand in the gap and speak up for “people on the other side of the street” like humanities and social sciences, and that faculty should work together to find ways to share funding and raise money, and how tuition may have to go even higher, but in the end, it got back to Shelton and Hay and communication.

Since I’m a Godgeek, I thought that Nadel’s comment on giving the dynamic duo a second chance sounded a little like Regent Ernest Calderón last week when he told me he believed in redemption. Calderón is Catholic and we Catholics are big into redemption, so it isn’t surprising he would use those terms even though he was referring to Shelton’s ability to pull the family together at UA. But when I checked back with him this morning to make sure I understood him correctly, he tweeted me this clarification that sort of sounded like a warning to UA administration and definitely sounded like St. Paul:

I do embrace redemption and forgiveness, but there also must be good works.

This is an illustration of how much reading I have to do for my post-degree teacher certification classes. This is not a picture of how peaceful I am about it.

I have a new schedule, and that schedule is: Get all your school work done, then you can do your unpaid reporting/blogging.

However, my e-mail in box is full of professors/department heads explaining how the response to the University of Arizona Faculty poll regarding confidence/no confidence in the UA administration was probably higher than the 31 percent that the raw numbers make look real. (Geez, what WAS that sentence? This is what happens to your brain when you go back to school after a 25-year break.)

So, I felt I had to respond briefly: To all who read this blog, please know I will be posting the interview I had with UA Regents Professor Lynn Nadel, who helped develop the poll and is helping tabulate results, later today or early tomorrow. It will explain how the response rate of active faculty might be closer to 50 percent, which really does make things look worse for the UA administration.

But I can’t do that until I’ve been a good student and finished all my work, which looks like it will take at least seven hours. And btw, just fyi (I’m too busy to spell the words out!) it has now been confirmed to me by people who take both in-person classes and online classes that the reading in the online version is at least 1/3 as much as that in traditional classes, so I am not – as I had begun to suspect – really stupid and slow. Let the readership say Amen.

Lots and lots of numbers

Those of you who pay attention to numbers – and I’m certain you all do – may be wondering why I reported yesterday’s University of Arizona faculty poll results in a different manner than what you’ll read in today’s Arizona Daily Star, or even over at UA Defender.

The Star reported mostly in percentages, which I have never liked, and not just because figuring them out makes my head hurt. I just think percentages can be used to make things sound worse – or better – than they actually are. In addition, both the Star and UA Defender combined numerical responses in some way to arrive at their figures, whereas I focused only on the extremes – the votes in “full confidence” and “no confidence” ranges because that middle zone – 2, 3 and 4 – is a sea of gray that could say anything from “Well, today it seems like the administration is doing an OK job,” to “I don’t know. I hate to commit one way or the other.”

UA Defender explained their contention that the poll shows 80 percent with no confidence in President Robert N. Shelton and 86 percent with no confidence in Provost Meredith Hay this way:

The UA Defender did a tally of the poll numbers that were made public today. Here’s how:
On the questions assessing “confidence” or “no confidence” where 1 = “no support” and 5 = “full support,” the range 1-3 defines the range going from “no support to neutral.” Everything shy of 3.0, the midpoint, is negative – the “unhappy range.” Or “no confidence,” if you prefer. (More here.)

The Star’s reporter added up the votes in the 1 and 2 range on the scale of 1 to 5 where 1 equaled no confidence and 5 equaled total confidence to come up with her percentages of about 60 percent having little or no confidence in Shelton/Hay leadership and 40 percent having some of full confidence in answer to the come-to-Jesus question of how much confidence a voter had in the ability of central administration “to lead us through the tough challenges we face now and in the foreseeable future?”

So, that’s the explanation of my thinking on yesterday’s post — but here’s today’s question: Why did so few faculty vote? Because, to me, the only percentage that really matters in yesterday’s poll is 31 percent – the percentage of eligible faculty that actually took the time (and put up with the admitted poll problems) to say whether or not they think Shelton and/or Hay are doing a good job. Does that mean that two-thirds of the faculty think Shelton/Hay are just fine? Or, that two-thirds of the faculty are apathetic? If so, are they apathetic because they’ve come to believe – after faculty forums and rah-rah administrative e-mails and the whole White Paper process – that no one in the Admin Building gives a hoot what faculty say? Or, are the faculty so busy they don’t have time to vote?

UA Defender claims that some of the faculty may not have received the e-mail about voting. While that may have been true at the beginning of the week, I think that’s a stretch to say multitudes didn’t hear about it by, say Wednesday of last week. So I think something else might be going on, and that something else is what needs to be examined, both by the faculty and the administration. (And, an interesting aside: Faculty in the College of Humanities and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences voted in the highest numbers, followed by those in Eller and the College of Law. Hmmm.)

Shelton came out with a faculty e-mail shortly after the poll was released that claims he is now listening and wants to meet with faculty in each college. (He was busy yesterday, because less than an hour after his faculty poll response, UA press delivered the news that Shelton doesn’t consider chalking on campus criminal damage but would require offenders to be sent to the Dean of Students office.)

Some are looking with skepticism on Shelton’s make-nice memo and if you want to know why, check out Sally Gradstudent’s nice link-list of former statements about engaging the community. It certainly doesn’t engender trust. I hope, for the good of the university that Shelton really will listen to what people have to say, and I hope faculty will actually show up to say it. As the poll showed, this isn’t about differential cuts – it is about the manner in which those are being handled and the person handling them is Hay. It’s time for Shelton to face the music on that one and teach his provost to play nice so everyone can get along. Otherwise, as Arizona Board of Regents President Ernest Calderon said last week, some serious choices might have to be made.

I was just forwarded this e-mail that was sent to the University of Arizona campus community from president

UA President Robert N. Shelton

Robert N. Shelton. Just wanted to pass it on to readers. I also heard from Arizona Board of Regents President Ernest Calderon, who said he plans to speak with Shelton about the poll in a private meeting next week. Here’s Shelton’s e-mail:

I have said from the very beginning of the budget crisis that I wanted to
hear from as many people on campus as possible.  Nearly one-third of the
eligible faculty voted in the poll that was conducted last week.  While
there is variable representation across the colleges, and time will be
needed to analyze the many open-ended comments, there are nevertheless some very clear themes that stand out in the answers from those faculty who voted.

Many people on campus are frustrated.  Many feel that they have not been heard.  Others feel that the Provost and I should have provided more detail on how we planned to approach the differential cuts that most (though not all) believe are the best way to tackle the enormous challenge before us. For some, personality and personal communication style are the issues.

While we have attempted to be as transparent in this process as possible, it
is apparent that we need to do more, both in sharing details of the
monumental budget dilemma that we face, and in engaging our faculty in the
search for solutions.

To that end, we are planning two immediate steps.  First, I have asked our
faculty leadership to schedule a Presidential Forum with the faculty of each
college.  This will provide an opportunity for me to hear from and engage
the faculty in each area of our University.  I expect those to be frank
conversations with no topic off the table.  It will also afford the
opportunity to discuss how we, as a University community, can confront the
very real political obstacles that all of us in education face in this
State.

Second, Provost Hay has already begun planning to meet with smaller groups
of faculty leaders to discuss the continuing actions that are being taken to
deal with the cuts that we have already received from the state
(approximately $100 million). Even more critical will be talking through the
possible options for dealing with what will undoubtedly be more devastating
cuts in the coming years.  How we go about decentralizing unit budgets and
implementing a tuition funds flow model will be critical components of those
conversations.

Issues that we face in this state are not only about money, but about our
values. Partisan state politics intrude on both of those areas on a constant
basis. In virtually every corner of the country there has been a shift away
from state support for public universities.  This trend is probably most
evident in Arizona, where over the past two decades the portion of the state
budget dedicated to higher education has decreased by half.  By all accounts
that trend will continue, and how we as a University replace those revenues
is critical to the future viability of our institution.  I cannot emphasize
enough that the status quo will not hold.

Let me conclude by saying that I take the comments that were shared in the
poll to heart.  This has been a frustrating time for the administration as
well as the faculty.  We want to do everything possible to sustain the
greatness of the University of Arizona. Finding the right path in a time of
historic revenue reductions is not easy, and not everyone is going to agree
on whatever path is chosen.

As I have said many times, in the face of these state budget cuts we cannot
continue with business as usual nor do everything that we have done in the
past.  That is a sad reality, but it is the reality nonetheless.    How we
arrive at a model that will preserve the University as the type of
institution we all want it to be will take time and enormous effort.  I very
much welcome the best thinking of everyone on campus to help inform the
approach we take.  I will work hard in the months ahead to seek out those
ideas, and I pledge to greater engagement of faculty leadership at the stage
of taking quantitative decisions.

UA provost Meredity Hay

The votes are in from the University of Arizona’s 10-question faculty poll regarding faculty confidence in the administrative team of President Robert N. Shelton and Provost Meredith Hay.

Of the 2754 faculty eligible to vote, only 858 actually did. But of those, 483 said they do not support the way Hay has carried out the Transformation process. Only 256 said the same about Shelton, showing that – at least of those who voted – there is indeed more acrimony directed at Hay than her boss. this trend was the same for the question regarding how the administration has handled the recent budget cuts: 483 said they didn’t support the way Hay has handled it, while only 212 said they did not support how Shelton handled it.

The big money question was the final one, and it tied Shelton and Hay together by asking, “How much confidence do you have in the ability of central administration to lead us through the tough challenges we face now and in the foreseeable future? On a scale of 1-5, 1=No confidence, 5=Full confidence.” Three hundred and eleven faculty voted no confidence, and only 75 voted full confidence. The remainder fell in the middle.

Shelton and Hay have been notified of the results, according to the e-mail sent out with the poll, signed by Faculty Chair Wanda Howell and other faculty leaders. I have not yet been able to reach either, but I’ve been told the Arizona Daily Star should have a full report tomorrow, so check your morning paper.

All the poll’s 10 questions followed the 1 to 5 scale of responses – the numbers I gave above were those who voted absolutely no support. The poll is broken down in greater detail below. An executive summary of the written comments collected in the poll and further evaluation of the numerical responses is expected by the end of this week, according to the e-mail sent to deans and department heads with the poll from faculty chair Wanda Howell. Next steps are still being determined, but some background on what might happen, at least from the viewpoint of the President of the Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees Arizona’s three public universities, is here.

Here are the detailed poll results:

September 18-25, 2009 UA Faculty Poll Participation:

Eligible Voters: 2754 (includes approximately 750 emeriti faculty)

Ballots cast: 858      Percentage of eligible voters:  31.1%

Participation by

College Eligible Voters Votes Cast Voter Rate

CALS                          377                              106                              28.1%

CALA                          32                                1                                  3.1%

EDUCATION              104                              15                                14.4%

ENGINEERING          179                              38                                21.2%

COFA                          156                              55                                35.3%

COH                            185                              104                              56.2%

LAW                            53                                16                                30.2%

COM                           380                              60                                15.8%

NUR                            72                                5                                  6.9%

OPT SCI                     41                                5                                  12.2%

PHARM                      46                                13                                28.3%

MEZCOPH                 39                                6                                  15.4%

COS                            473                              144                              30.4%

SBS                             335                              176                              52.2%

ELLER                        123                              58                                47.2%

NON-COLLEGE         158                              56                                35.4%

Question 1. Do you support the way the President has carried out the Transformation Process? On a scale of 1-5, 1=No Support, 5=Full support

1      256

2      206

3      198

4      128

5      64

Question 2. Do you support the way the President has handled the recent budget cuts? On a scale of 1-5, 1=No Support, 5=Full support

1      212

2      199

3      178

4      167

5      95

Question 3. Do you support the way the Provost has carried out the Transformation Process? On a scale of 1-5, 1=No Support, 5=Full support

1      483

2      142

3      106

4      73

5      42

Question 4. Do you support the way the Provost has handled the recent budget cuts? On a scale of 1-5, 1=No Support, 5=Full support

1      444

2      130

3      114

4      93

5      61

Question 5. Do you support the principle of differential cuts? On a scale of 1-5, 1=No Support, 5=Full support

1      152

2      75

3      135

4      168

5      317

Question 6. Do you believe that the central administration has communicated adequately concerning recent changes at the UA?  On a scale of 1-5, 1=Do not agree, 5=Agree

1      338

2      196

3      142

4      112

5      63

Question 7. Do you believe Open Forums would be important in improving communication between the central administration and the campus community? On a scale of 1-5, 1=Do not agree, 5=Agree

1      91

2      155

3      264

4      172

5      165

Question 8. Do you believe More Email and Other Digital Messages would be important in improving communication between the central administration and the campus community? On a scale of 1-5, 1=Do not agree, 5=Agree

1      164

2      141

3      243

4      175

5      124

Question 9. Do you think central administrator should be more visible on the University Campus? On a scale of 1-5, 1=Do not agree, 5=Agree

1      67

2      75

3      218

4      200

5      287

Question 10. How much confidence do you have in the ability of central administration to lead us through the tough challenges we face now and in the foreseeable future? On a scale of 1-5, 1=No confidence, 5=Full confidence

1      311

2      204

3      168

4      98

5      75

A postscript of sorts: UA Defender, the mostly anonymous faculty forum/blog that started to call into question the leadership of Hay and Shelton, has what appears to be one of its final posts here. Those running the blog appear to be asking for their blog to gracefully retire as long as another official faculty forum rises in its place. You can read the entire post for yourself, but this last bit is worth highlighting:

” … in the hope that ever-growing support and unity will gather around a senate-leadership group with the wherewithal, and, we hope, the will, to secure stronger, better-focused faculty involvement in an effective, productive relationship with the president and provost, whoever they may be, going forward. That can happen. And it must be done. By drawing on the collective wisdom and experience of the world-class faculty that is ours at the University of Arizona.

For it to happen with Robert Shelton, the onus would be more on him than on us. That much we have made clear. Regardless of the poll numbers, the very existence of the poll has made that clear.”

University of Arizona Facilities Management said this afternoon that the actual cost of cleaning up the chalk from the UA protests on budget cuts was $354.73. Cleanup costs had originally been estimated at $1,000. Christopher Kopach, associate director of Facilities Management said that the report on the chalking indicated that at least 80 areas had chalk put on them, including the sides of buildings.

UA employees took care of the first incidents outside of the bookstore, but because this was considered vandalism, UA has a contract with five local vendors through state-required insurance to take care of vandalism cleanup.

There is some great reporting from Arizona Desert Lamp regarding past chalk incidents at UA — go see the list and note that no one was ever arrested in those events, which makes one wonder: Why Jacob Miller? POSTSCRIPT: The ADS is reporting that ADL blogger Evan Lisull was cited today for criminal damage for using chalk on sidewalks. According to the report, police say Lisull was chalking the base of a statue, but Lisull said he only chalked the sidewalk and was doing it in direct protest of Miller’s arrest last week.

I don’t have the promised exact cost of the chalk removal yet, but Sally Gradstudent has posted pictures of the chalk removal – at least the chalk that was on the sidewalk – and they don’t look like it would take the estimated $1,000. See them here. Scroll down; they are about halfway down the page.

This is not the UA chalk criminal ... but it is chalk drawing.

Sgt. Juan Alvarez, University of Arizona police department spokesman, says that Jacob Miller, identified as a Geography graduate student by the Arizona Daily Wildcat, was arrested yesterday for drawing with sidewalk chalk because “this went beyond writing on the sidewalk – it was the buildings and public monuments.” He said state statute “exempts the ground” from a criminal damage citation, but not vertical services. There are also other caveats, such as if the ground is vandalized with spray paint or hate speech. A press release on the arrest can be found here.

Alvarez said UA Facilities Management claimed yesterday that the cost of cleaning up the chalk “damage” is estimated to be $1,000, a figure I find highly questionable, as someone who has power sprayed pounds of sidewalk chalk off my driveway and sidewalk over 20 years of raising chalk-crazy kids. More on my reasoning later.

Alvarez said in a phone interview this morning that police were notified by a UA employee at about 8:30 a.m. that a person or persons were drawing with chalk on the UA Alumni Plaza just outside of the administration building on the UA Mall. Alvarez wouldn’t identify the person who made the call, and I don’t have time to chase down the police report because I’m working on starting my new life today.

When I reached Miller this morning by phone, he said he thinks the person making the phone call was a man who approached Miller and another one of the student chalk bandits:

“There were others doing it too – 10 or 12. We did the chalking starting at about 7:30 actually for about an hour, then I went to the rally at 12:15 and when I left at 12:40, I left alone. The police had anticipated me coming to the rally, they waited for me to leave and then they came and hailed me when I was alone … They said they had surveillance of everything, that the whole administration building is on camera, but why me specifically, I don’t know. I was only responsible for writing on horizontal surfaces and I don’t know who wrote (on the walls of the Plaza). I suspect I was identified in a complaint made by the anonymous man who approached us. Maybe he took a picture of me with his cell phone camera. But it won’t stand in court, because I didn’t (chalk) the walls.”

Alvarez wouldn’t say how UAPD “developed information that it was Mr. Miller who (defaced) the monument and building walls” only that the investigation helped the department “develop probable cause for criminal damage citation.” Some of his statement to me:

There were other people that help Mr. Miller, but we couldn’t identify them. If we are able to identify them, we could pursue charges. But I will say we do have discretion if we issue a citation, a warning  or just divert them to the Dean of Students, if they are a student.”

The 24-year-old Miller is due in Pima County Justice Court on Oct. 14, he said, and he plans to fight the charges.

I’ve taken part in other organized (activism) efforts and you see groups doing this all the time, using chalk. Any day of the week, you come around the Mall and see an ad for something made with chalk – religious groups, student groups, athletic groups. It was really surprising and difficult to understand to have this happen and I’m really quite upset about it. … I just showed up, answering the call to protest the education cuts, to fight for quality education, I’m not really involved with the graduate student group, I just saw a flier I think. Apparently there is a rule that you can’t use chalk without special permission, but I see it all the time and so (punishment) isn’t enforced all the time obviously. Why was it enforced arbitrarily at this event when (chalk drawing) is a common thing here? I’m sure it is some misunderstanding and sure it will be resolved.

(I can just imagine Miller’s folks’ response when he called to give them news of the arrest: “You did what? Chalk, you say? Are you sure you heard the police right? Sidewalk chalk???? Honey, you must be mistaken.”)

I’m not trying to make light of vandalism; I’m all for locking up punks who deface property with spray paint and gang signs. (Actually, I’m all for making them do three hours/day for an entire year, of public service that involves hanging out with toddlers. Two-year-olds can break anyone.)

But sidewalk chalk outlines (not solid coloring), either horizontal or vertical, hardly qualifies because sidewalk chalk is easy to remove. On vertical surfaces, you would need a hose with a power nozzle. On sidewalks, same thing, or, left alone, the chalk would be removed by the soles of the 1000s of shoes walking over it in one day at UA. If it rained (as if!), it would also be removed.

Which brings us to the contention that this was $1,000 worth of damage. I called Christopher Kopach of UA Facilities Management and he said the $1,000 was just an estimate and that he’s drilling down into that number today “to get a true cost on it.” He said he was out of town yesterday and that he is trying to find out today if a vendor was called to take care of the removal or if it was handled by UA Facilities Management employees. The one thing he knew for sure was that the removers went once at about 7:45 to do some chalk removal and then again later in the morning.

As I said above, I’ve spent my fair share of parent time removing sidewalk chalk. And the art I removed was rarely just outline drawings. My kids drew whole cities on my driveway and colored in cars, people, etc. (One of my little artists is now a UA junior with an art minor who just got an A+ on her latest project. I didn’t even know they gave out A+ in college. And it all started with sidewalk chalk…) To remove all that drawing, I would spend, max 30 minutes, with a spray hose. (By myself, in the heat of the day, no sunglasses, dressed in combat gear ….)

So I find it almost impossible to buy that it would cost UA $1,000 to clean up chalk art, vertical, horizontal or diagonal. Say they had to send a whole “team” of four guys and two spray hoses and a scrub brush and it took, max – and this is thinking these guys work REALLY, REALLY SLOW – four hours. Estimating really high, say each of these employees make $30/hour. That’s $30 x 4 people = $120/hour x 4 hours = $480. That means who ever is doing this job for UA would have to charge more than $500 for what? A truck-mounted power hose? Maybe, but if they used a truck mounted power hose the job should be done by only two people and in about 15 seconds, not four hours.

Point is, in the middle of a budget crisis, it would be ridiculous for UA to spend $1,000 to remove chalk protesting (wait for it…) the budget crisis. If UA President Robert N. Shelton and Provost Meredith Hay want to increase their good-will standing on the campus, they might want to think about that and come up with a more appropriate response to the graduate students’ frustration. (A good post on if Miller’s citation violates the letter of the law is here at Sally Gradstudent.

AS A POSTSCRIPT: If you guys aren’t reading the Arizona Desert Lamp, you’re missing some great reporting, writing and opining by two UA undergrads who are not journalism majors. Their post on Shelton and Hay’s op-ed in yesterday’s Star does a good job of reading between the lines. And, no, I’m not sending you there just because blogger Evan Lisull mentioned my posts on the faculty ruckus; ADL is just really that good, and their work makes me grieve that newspapers continue to shed faster than my dog sheds hair, because Lisull has the makings of a great investigative reporter. Our loss.

POSTSCRIPT II: I echo what Roxanne over at Peace Garden Mama has to say about Anne Lamott, who I’ve often read and admired, in regards to Lamott’s essay regarding her participation in an assisted suicide. It is hard, methinks, to support someone – no matter how good their writing – when their description of feeding someone poison makes you think they may have lost touch with their soul. Roxane leaves judgment to God; I’m a little less prone to that in the discussion of assisted suicide. I know what it is like to think the suicide is the light at the end of your terribly dark tunnel. I’ve been awash in the morass that is grief, and physical pain, and despair. But, thank God and thank my friends, I always end up pointed toward hope: Hope that it won’t always hurt as bad as it does on that particular day, in that particular hour or minute. I believe (judge) that we fail as a society when we cannot help people see that hope.