UT Being Ruined?

[LongestHorn 759]

Why do you hate diversity? 

[David Dennison 18951]

2 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

My argument is that we can do without the massive diversity and inclusion bureaucracy - that it's hurting the university. That's the only argumenty I'm making.

Your argument is unpersuasive.

[Lagunamadre 1975]

2 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

My argument is that we can do without the massive diversity and inclusion bureaucracy - that it's hurting the university. That's the only argumenty I'm making.

Can you give a real-world example, actual or hypothetical, of how investing in diversity and inclusion hurts the University or any University. 

[David Dennison 18951]

1 minute ago, Lagunamadre said:

Can you give a real-world example, actual or hypothetical, of how investing in diversity and inclusion hurts the University or any University. 

Abigail Fisher will never recover!

[Jive Turkey 12648]

1 minute ago, Lagunamadre said:

Can you give a real-world example, actual or hypothetical, of how investing in diversity and inclusion hurts the University or any University. 

UT lost out on that brilliant scholar Abigail Fisher, who no doubt went on to great things at her back up school, the academic powerhouse known as LSU.

I’ll never understand why people engage in Tahoe’s race-baiting “questions.”

[Jive Turkey 12648]

2 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Abigail Fisher will never recover!

Damn you!

[Celery Man 21003]

Hey there’s always A&M

[David Dennison 18951]

Just now, longhornmatt said:

The bureaucracy at UT is bloated and ridiculous, in pretty much every area including but not limited to diversity programs.  The health center allergy shot place had numerous employees yet only serviced like 4 patients an hour and required appointments.  Nice people, but jeez.

Starting a thread asking, “Is UT being ruined by diversity?”, linking to an outrage factory clickbait article, and then accusing everyone else of making simple minded and hysterical arguments ... well, that was not the best way to go about having the discussion.

This isn't really a thread about bloated administrative bureaucracy at Texas. It's an anti-affirmative action thread. Won't someone think of the white people?

[Ghost of LL 15544]

1 hour ago, TahoeHorn said:

There is a problem in politics with a certain type of simple-minded thinking.  It is that people interpret, or at least characterize, constructive criticism as total opposition.  For example if somebody thinks we spend too much on a defense procurement they are said to oppose national security.  Or if they argue that spending a gazillion dollars on bullshit university bureaucracy, then they oppose the stated mission of the bureaucracy.  This is one reason why costs spin out of control.

 

The things that make UT great are not spending tens of millions on bullshit bureaucracies.

 

On this thread the quality of the arguments in favor of the big bureaucracy are appalling.  They consist of personal attacks and the type of simple-minded argument described above.  There is no argument explaining why we need the big bureaucracy.

I don't know why I should give a serious response to a Tahoe thread.  But here goes--

Texas schoolchildren are overwhelmingly minority--52% Hispanic and 13% Black (with only 29% being White).  Moreover, according to our state's former demographer, 62% of those kids come from economically disadvantaged households.

Now--we can teach that diverse student body with a lily-white faculty.  That is, after all, what we've always done.  But doing that would ignore the manifold studies reflecting the educational benefits of having teachers of the same race/ethnicity/background.  Moreover, it would ignore the obvious mentoring benefits of having professors who have encountered similar obstacles in reaching their current position.

As a public institution, the purpose of The University of Texas is to benefit the entire state.  Among the ways it does so is by educating the populace and by providing an educated and skilled workforce necessary for economic development.  Were The University not to employ faculty qualified to instruct the state's increasingly diverse population, it would fail in its founding mission.

 

 

 

In other words--take your donut-bearing white-nationalist horseshit and shove it up your ass, you fucking racist troglodyte.  

Edited May 17, 2018 by Ghost of LL

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

“The desire of university administrators to impose leftist orthodoxy is nearly universal and unremarkable. What is surprising, though, is that Fenves’s radical mission to remake UT has gone unchallenged by Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, his appointees to the powerful Board of Regents that oversees UT, and the GOP-controlled legislature that funds Fenves’s ideological sandbox.”

Maybe that’s a clue that the article’s premise is wrong? So dumb.  “It’s surpsing that the scores of people on the ground observing the place and would be politically motivated to call it out haven’t!  They’re the ones that are crazy and not me, I assure you.”

Edited May 17, 2018 by SuingToGetAMessageBoard?

[jimmyjazz 46230]

Ghost of LL presumes that Tahoe believes the browns have a right to an education.

(Get it?  Brown VS Board of Education?  I kill myself.)

[Sawbonz 27600]

22 minutes ago, LongestHorn said:

"The claim that “diverse perspectives” lead to academic breakthroughs is a fundamental myth of identity politics. Academic progress—curing diseases, scientific and engineering breakthroughs, the invention of new technologies, and all other advances—is the result of excellence, not “diversity.” Marie Curie did not discover radioactivity because she was a woman but because she was a first-rate scientist."

Curie was among 5,000 women secretly educated at The Flying University because Warsaw only accepted men. 

But i do see his point.  His fear of the university being subverted from within.  

Part of a University's mission is to define what we aspire to be, and how we wish to appear, as a society as a whole.  As such, increasing diversity is of paramount importance in advancing those goals.  How many Marie Curies have we missed out on in history because of the circumstances of birth? How many do we lose today because gifted children don't see anyone who looks like them in positions of authority?

Quote

For genius like Shakespeare’s is not born among laboring, uneducated, servile people. It was not born in England among the Saxons and the Britons. It is not born today among the working classes. How, then, could it have been born among women whose work began, according to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power of law and custom? Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working classes.

Full text in spoiler

Spoiler

Shakespeare's Sister -- Virginia Woolf

 

Here am I asking why women did not write poetry in the

Elizabethan age, and I am not sure how they were educated;

whether they were taught to write; whether they had sitting

rooms to themselves; how many women had children before

they were twenty-one; what, in short, they did from eight in

the morning till eight at night. They had no money evidently;

according to Professor Trevelyan they were married whether

they liked it or not before they were out of the nursery, at fifteen

or sixteen very likely. It would have been extremely odd, even

upon this showing, had one of them suddenly written the plays

of Shakespeare, I concluded, and I thought of that old gentleman,

who is dead now, but was a bishop, I think, who declared that it

was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have

the genius of Shakespeare. He wrote to the papers about it. He

also told a lady who applied to him for information that cats do

not as a matter of fact go to heaven, though they have, he added,

souls of a sort. How much thinking those old gentlemen used to

save one! How the borders of ignorance shrank back at their

approach! Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the

plays of Shakespeare.

Be that as it may, I could not help thinking, as I looked at

the works of Shakespeare on the shelf, that the bishop was right

at least in this; it would have been impossible, completely and

entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare

in the age of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since facts are so

hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare

had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say.

Shakespeare himself went, very probably—his mother was an

heiress—to the grammar school, where he may have learnt

Latin—Ovid, Virgil, and Horace—and the elements of grammar

and logic. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached

rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he

should have done, to marry a woman in the neighborhood, who

bore him a child rather quicker than was right. That escapade

sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste

for the theater; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very

soon he got work in the theater, became a successful actor, and

lived at the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing

everybody, practicing his art on the boards, exercising his wits

in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen.

Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose,

remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as

agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school.

She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of

reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then,

one of her brother’s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her

parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the

stew and not moon about with books and papers. They would

have spoken sharply but kindly, for they were substantial people

who knew the conditions of life for a woman and loved their

daughter—indeed, more likely than not she was the apple of

her father’s eye. Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple

loft on the sly, but was careful to hide them or set fire to them.

Soon, however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be

betrothed to the son of a neighboring wool stapler. She cried

out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely

beaten by her father. Then he ceased to scold her. He begged her

instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her

marriage. He would give her a chain of beads or a fine petticoat,

he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey

him? How could she break his heart? The force of her own gift

alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings,

let herself down by a rope one summer’s night, and took

the road to London. She was not seventeen. The birds that sang

in the hedge were not more musical than she was. She had the

quickest fancy, a gift like her brother’s, for the tune of words.

Like him, she had a taste for the theater. She stood at the stage

door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The

manager—a fat, loose-lipped man—guffawed. He bellowed

something about poodles dancing and women acting—no

woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. He hinted—you

can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft. Could

she even seek her dinner in a tavern or roam the streets at midnight?

Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly

upon the lives of men and women and the study of their

ways. At last—for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare

the poet in her face, with the same gray eyes and rounded

brows—at last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her;

she found herself with child by that gentleman and so—who

shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when

caught and tangled in a woman’s body?—killed herself one

winter’s night and lies buried at some crossroads where the

omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.

That, more or less, is how the story would run, I think, if

a woman in Shakespeare’s day had had Shakespeare’s genius. But

for my part, I agree with the deceased bishop, if such he was—

it is unthinkable that any woman in Shakespeare’s day should

have had Shakespeare’s genius. For genius like Shakespeare’s is

not born among laboring, uneducated, servile people. It was

not born in England among the Saxons and the Britons. It is

not born today among the working classes. How, then, could it

have been born among women whose work began, according

to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the

nursery, who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by

all the power of law and custom? Yet genius of a sort must have

existed among women as it must have existed among the working

classes. Now and again an Emily Brontë or a Robert Burns

blazes out and proves its presence. But certainly it never got

itself onto paper. When, however, one reads of a witch being

ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman

selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a

mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a

suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen,

some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor or

mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture

that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess

that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them,

was often a woman. It was a woman Edward Fitzgerald, I think,

suggested who made the ballads and the folk songs, crooning

them to her children, beguiling her spinning with them, or the

length of the winter’s night.

 

[Brisketexan 105445]

24 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

My argument is that we can do without the massive diversity and inclusion bureaucracy - that it's hurting the university. That's the only argumenty I'm making.

You used the word "massive."  Words have meaning.

How massive is this bureaucracy?  What percentage of the current UT budget is devoted to that bureaucracy?  What percentage of time and manpower is devoted to it?  Do you know?  If you do not, then you are just talking out of your ass.  Which, considering the quality of the verbiage you've shared on this thread, would be an understandable point of origin.

[Washpark 176]

1 hour ago, Brian Fantana said:

Another great thread by the freely admitted racist.

1234

[Sawbonz 27600]

50 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Yes, because I don't know where Texas is.  Solid contribution.

lighten up francis

[Johnny Sack 8397]

I understand wanting to hire a diverse faculty.  But why do we need a diversity department bureaucracy to do that?  What do these folks do all day?

I think a chainsaw could be taken to the administration of pretty much every department at UT and the quality would not suffer.

[Newdoc 3453]

19 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

Texas schoolchildren are overwhelmingly minority--52% Hispanic and 13% Black (with only 29% being White).

50%, 11% and 33% but you were close.  Numbers will skew heavily hispanic by 2050.  Will the "diversity" at the faculty level reflect that over the next two decades?  I have a feeling the squeaky wheel gets the grease on affirmative action and not necessarily represent a cross section based on population.  Then you thrown in gender identity, sexual preference representation and you get yourself into a mess.

And yes, most students likely don't care.  They just want a good professor teaching a good useful class that won't screw up their GPA.

[Brisketexan 105445]

1 minute ago, Johnny Sack said:

I understand wanting to hire a diverse faculty.  But why do we need a diversity department bureaucracy to do that?  What do these folks do all day?

I think a chainsaw could be taken to the administration of pretty much every department at UT and the quality would not suffer.

Likely true.  And if this thread was about bureaucratic inefficiency, that would be a good discussion.

But it's not.  It's based on a poorly-written opinion piece that's whining, all trumpeted by a donut-toting dinosaur who's "just asking questions."

Start a "public university bureaucracies need to be trimmed" thread, and I'll almost certainly be nodding my head in agreement with your posts.  This thread ain't that thread, though.

 

[TahoeHorn 107]

7 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

You used the word "massive."  Words have meaning.

How massive is this bureaucracy?  ...

It is a staff approaching 100.  As I previously stated, it should be a staff of one person.  They should have a modest salary (e.g. $50K for Austin) and no programs within UT.   Their job should be to visit schools which have underrepresented demos and help them get admitted in a color-blind admissions process. 

 

Any time a bureaucracy is 100 times what it should be I'd say massive is an understatement.  Imagine if a lawyer who needed one admin helper (who didn't bill) had 100.  I'd be talking about his massive support staff.

[jimmyjazz 46230]

10 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

lighten up francis

LOL

[Brian Fantana 6691]

The stupid just gets thicker and thicker. Jesus christ.

[David Dennison 18951]

45 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

My argument is that we can do without the massive diversity and inclusion bureaucracy - that it's hurting the university. That's the only argumenty I'm making.

How is it hurting the university?

[Brisketexan 105445]

2 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

It is a staff approaching 100.  As I previously stated, it should be a staff of one person.  They should have a modest salary (e.g. $50K for Austin) and no programs within UT.   Their job should be to visit schools which have underrepresented demos and help them get admitted in a color-blind admissions process. 

 

Any time a bureaucracy is 100 times what it should be I'd say massive is an understatement.  Imagine if a lawyer who needed one admin helper (who didn't bill) had 100.  I'd be talking about his massive support staff.

Citation, please.  Cite the factual support for your statement that our diversity bureaucracy is a "staff approaching 100."

[TahoeHorn 107]

The problem with large bureaucracies are twofold.  They waste money and they do stupid shit to justify their existence.  If UT had one staff person with no authority over programs and a mission to promote diversity among prospective students you wouldn't get the stupid shit.  There would be no memos on how to dress at Halloween because the person would have more important shit to do, no authority to write memos to students and no audience with somebody who could.  They'd be visiting the guidance counselor at Yates.

[fattyflattie 4638]

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

Yes, because I don't know where Texas is.  Solid contribution.

Just Southwest of Cal, where it’s always been. 

[Johnny Sack 8397]

10 minutes ago, Newdoc said:

50%, 11% and 33% but you were close.  Numbers will skew heavily hispanic by 2050. 

Good thing Herman ain't scared to recruit out of state.

[TahoeHorn 107]

5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Citation, please.  Cite the factual support for your statement that our diversity bureaucracy is a "staff approaching 100."

The article I linked in the OP.  Berkeley's is 150, btw.

[David Dennison 18951]

1 minute ago, TahoeHorn said:

The problem with large bureaucracies are twofold.  They waste money and they do stupid shit to justify their existence.  If UT had one staff person with no authority over programs and a mission to promote diversity among prospective students you wouldn't get the stupid shit.  There would be no memos on how to dress at Halloween because the person would have more important shit to do, no authority to write memos to students and no audience with somebody who could.  They'd be visiting the guidance counselor at Yates.

What do you suggest?

[Johnny Sack 8397]

1 minute ago, TahoeHorn said:

The article I linked in the OP.  Berkeley's is 150, btw.

https://salaries.texastribune.org/university-of-texas-at-austin/departments/division-of-diversity-and-community-engagement/

[David Dennison 18951]

Let's all read about the wasteful things being done to hurt UT.

[David Dennison 18951]

1 minute ago, Johnny Sack said:

https://salaries.texastribune.org/university-of-texas-at-austin/departments/division-of-diversity-and-community-engagement/

A median salary of $57,000 in Austin, Texas in 2018.

The horror!

[SubliminalHorn 6811]

Tahoe, just stop. You’re a fucking moron. Stop. 

[TahoeHorn 107]

2 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

https://salaries.texastribune.org/university-of-texas-at-austin/departments/division-of-diversity-and-community-engagement/

My new department would have one of those $42,185 outreach center counselors.  Maybe two.  That's it.  Not 94 people.  No budget for litigation.

[Johnny Sack 8397]

Just now, David Dennison said:

A median salary of $57,000 in Austin, Texas in 2018.

The horror!

When you have 94 of them, that shit kind of adds up.  5 or 6 million every year starts adding up to real money.  But fuck it, we can just raise tuition.

[Brisketexan 105445]

4 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

The article I linked in the OP.  Berkeley's is 150, btw.

 

2 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

https://salaries.texastribune.org/university-of-texas-at-austin/departments/division-of-diversity-and-community-engagement/

Yep.  Did y'all dig into that, like, AT ALL?

Because most of the folks listed as employees of that division....are also teachers/professors.  In other words, they perform MULTIPLE roles at the university, and among them is a role within that division.  In terms of both number of employees and dollars paid in salary, very few are dedicated to persons who exclusively work for that division.  A meaningful discussion would require an analysis of the costs and employee allocation that are EXCLUSIVELY to that division, as opposed to citing professor so-and-so who also happens to have a role in that division.

But, y'all know that.  Right?

[Ghost of LL 15544]

1 minute ago, TahoeHorn said:

My new department would have one of those $42,185 outreach center counselors.  Maybe two.  That's it.  Not 94 people.  No budget for litigation.

What happens if you get sued?

[David Dennison 18951]

3 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

When you have 94 of them, that shit kind of adds up.  5 or 6 million every year starts adding up to real money.  But fuck it, we can just raise tuition.

Don't pay it. Problem solved.

[Johnny Sack 8397]

Just now, Ghost of LL said:

What happens if you get sued?

[Johnny Sack 8397]

4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

Yep.  Did y'all dig into that, like, AT ALL?

Because most of the folks listed as employees of that division....are also teachers/professors.  In other words, they perform MULTIPLE roles at the university, and among them is a role within that division.  In terms of both number of employees and dollars paid in salary, very few are dedicated to persons who exclusively work for that division.  A meaningful discussion would require an analysis of the costs and employee allocation that are EXCLUSIVELY to that division, as opposed to citing professor so-and-so who also happens to have a role in that division.

But, y'all know that.  Right?

You sure about that?  Where are you getting that info?

Which class is VY teaching?  Because I want to audit that shit.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Johnny Sack

[TahoeHorn 107]

Just now, Ghost of LL said:

What happens if you get sued?

The legal department handles it.

I'm not opposed to defense.  I'm opposed to being a plaintiff in suits like the one in the article.

[TahoeHorn 107]

2 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Don't pay it. Problem solved.

The IRS makes me.

[Brisketexan 105445]

Just now, Johnny Sack said:

You sure about that?  Where are you getting that info?

Went to the division's website, and reviewed resumes of a sampling of the senior folks listed.  Most (but not all) are also lecturers, professors, leaders in UIL, etc.  In other words, they have other stand-alone positions in the university that merit their employment and pay.

[Johnny Sack 8397]

Just now, Brisketexan said:

Went to the division's website, and reviewed resumes of a sampling of the senior folks listed.  Most (but not all) are also lecturers, professors, leaders in UIL, etc.  In other words, they have other stand-alone positions in the university that merit their employment and pay.

You sure they don't get paid extra for those roles?

[SimonBolivar 10960]

3 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Don't pay it. Problem solved.

[David Dennison 18951]

Here are all of the terrible people ruining UT. 

[TahoeHorn 107]

6 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

Yep.  Did y'all dig into that, like, AT ALL?

Because most of the folks listed as employees of that division....are also teachers/professors.  In other words, they perform MULTIPLE roles at the university, and among them is a role within that division.  In terms of both number of employees and dollars paid in salary, very few are dedicated to persons who exclusively work for that division.  A meaningful discussion would require an analysis of the costs and employee allocation that are EXCLUSIVELY to that division, as opposed to citing professor so-and-so who also happens to have a role in that division.

But, y'all know that.  Right?

You are 100% WRONG.  All 94 positions are listed.

[David Dennison 18951]

3 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

The IRS makes me.

How, exactly?

[sasquatch69 603]

OP should listen to this episode of This American Life, in the hopes it will help him understand why diversity programs are important.  It's not just about recruiting - it's about helping kids from diverse and economically disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed once they get to college, instead of falling through the cracks and dropping out due to being in an environment that feels foreign and lack of a support system, among other reasons.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/550/three-miles

And don't give me any "they just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work harder" bullshit. It's so much more complex and nuanced than that.  

[Brisketexan 105445]

Just now, Johnny Sack said:

You sure they don't get paid extra for those roles?

Nope.  I couldn't find any data breaking down pay based on role.

That said, in my experience both at UT and after my time there (with folks involved in teaching and administration), UT folks often have multiple roles/titles - Professor so-and-so is also the chair of the XYC Council, or is also a VP of ABC (often related to their particular field).  It's common and expected of professor types.

[hayden_horn 11365]

$50k salary in austin will really attract the best and brightest, lol