ANGRY

[cleolinda]

Okay. I have never actually said which school I went to as an undergraduate, but I'm going to tell you that it was Birmingham-Southern, because they are pretty much dead to me now. My friend David on Twitter--well, one of my two friends David on Twitter--mentioned an email that BSC sent out, announcing some grade-A fuckery. I don't think they have my current address, because I didn't get it, or else they somehow sensed that it would make my head explode. But now David's forwarded it to me, so this is all straight from the school's mouth. You can read it here, if you scroll down.

Let me rewind a little for you here. Birmingham-Southern is--was--a wonderful little liberal arts school with great fine and performing arts programs and a really good basketball team. It had a small creative writing program that, when I was there, was trying to get more funding and do the best it could. I was in a couple of different editorial positions on the literary magazine while I was there. And one of the primary reasons I went to this school was because it did not have a football team. I had gone to a high school that was very focused on football, and quite honestly, I wanted to go to a school where someone would give a shit about arts and academics. I'm perfectly happy for people to go to football schools, but that's not where I wanted to go, and there are very few places in Alabama that aren't football schools. This was one of them.

WELL NOT ANYMORE, THAT IS. Shortly after I left, Dr. Neal Berte--the school's beloved president of many years--retired. And then this David Pollick person became the new president, and then This David Pollick Person took it upon himself to acquire us a football team and A STADIUM, and if that was someone else's call, tell me, so I can blow them up with the power of my mind instead. And now, NOW, the arts and academics are getting cut. BEHOLD:

A total of 29 faculty members were given notice that their positions would be eliminated within the next two years. Many of the faculty members cut today were tenured, but tenured and tenure-track faculty members will be given one-year contracts for the upcoming school year.

Altogether five majors were cut from the college’s offerings. Those majors included accounting, computer science, dance, French and German.

One non-tenured faculty member was cut from the math department and three non-tenured faculty were cut from the English department.

One of those, by the way, was a friend of mine. It also looks like one of my favorite professors may get cut next year. For the record, I was a double French/Spanish major, by which I mean FUCK YOU. Seriously, FUCK YOU.

Back to the article:

The cuts follow the discovery of deep and long-term financial problems at the college. In recent weeks, BSC faculty members have privately expressed frustration with the administration’s lack of transparency. In particular, faculty and staff were upset that when they had voiced concerns earlier in the fiscal year, they had been falsely assured the college’s financial condition was in good standing.

For the last several years, BSC has undertaken a series of expensive capital projects, including new dormitories, athletic fields and a welcome center. Few, if any, members of the campus community realized that the college was hemorrhaging cash at the same time these projects were underway.

I just--I would like to continue ranting and quoting fuckwittery at you, but I have a migraine now. I just. I can't. What. This school was a rescue for people, people who didn't fit in at schools that are all about sports (which, around here, is most of them). This school was a place to prove to people that there was, in fact, room in the world for them. And now that place is being taken away. Because God knows we don't have ENOUGH FOOTBALL TEAMS IN ALABAMA.

As a final note, please enjoy the BSC President David Pollick Must Go Facebook group.

Comments

[theelusiven.livejournal.com]

WTF? Ugh, that's ridiculous. I remember being surprised that the University that Ate Birmingham had a football team when MrElusiveN went there for his Masters' degree.

South Alabama got a team in the last year, too, but it's pretty ridiculous, how little attention is being paid to it.

[brainchild129.livejournal.com]

I don't blame you for being pissed off. My god - FIVE whole majors, and it's not like computer science or accounting or languages like French and German are overly esoteric or specialized programs, all so they can have their precious football team which will probably never win anything because their league is too small to attract any good players away from the larger colleges and university in your area.

The vast stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze.

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I thought too. It's not like they cut "applied orinthology" or something like that. They cut frickin' FRENCH. Because NO ONE needs to know that.

[endlesspurpose.livejournal.com]

Is there a club for Those Who Hate Their Alma Mater? Or should we start one? I didn't go to Birmingham Southern, but I'd sure be pissed if I did. I hate the school that issued my degree for different reasons, lol. Although they do play the "football is more important than everything" card every now and then.

[elizardbits.livejournal.com]

I WILL JOIN THIS CLUB. Goddammit, NYU is a fucking cancer on the Village.

Admittedly, my loathing first began when they turned one of my favourite nightclubs into a high-rise dorm. WHERE WILL THEIR MANIFEST DESTINY END.

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

Ugh...the South. My people. What is it WITH you and American football? Being a high school teacher I run into this crap ALL the frickin' time. Why do we need five football coaches while our VERY GOOD soccer team can't get a pension for an assistant coach? While our department has to beg, borrow and steal everything we just about have? Priorities people.

Obviously not the same thing you're dealing with, but I obviously have some deep seated issues here.

[hulamoth.livejournal.com]

oh no, they always try to justify it as that the football team brings in attention and advertising and money and donors.

Which is a wonderful long term gamble if it works, but in the meantime it means lots of cuts that may not heal.

[saramiskismet.livejournal.com]

This is a load of BULLSHIT.

[sleevesofsatin.livejournal.com]

There are still great liberal arts schools out there not focused at all on sports and totally safe havens for us academic/art nerds.

Cornell College in Mt Vernon, IA is one of them (Class of 2008 representin here!)

www.cornellcollege.edu

[elbales]

Yeah... but they're not in Alabama. :(

(I went to another of those; Mills College in Oakland, CA has athletics, but academics have always been more important, and our music and dance and art programs are famous. This obsession with football, it is Fail.)

(See icon for my response to the whole situation.)

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

That is seriously horrible. It always makes me sad when I see colleges and universities place sports ahead of academics.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Some people are brought into educational institutions to ruin things. In my junior year at my arts high school, they replaced the woman who had founded the multi-award winning department with a bureaucrat who proceeded to alienate most of the students and force out the long-standing professional artists who were teaching in favour of her pet idiots (seriously. One of them taught a theatre history course and identified Wilde as a Restoration playwright). She was involved in several cases of verbally and emotionally harassing students (I was one of the students) and when we complained, the office of education higher-ups protected her. She's still there and I prefer to pretend the school no longer exists.

[hopeandmemory.livejournal.com]

(seriously. One of them taught a theatre history course and identified Wilde as a Restoration playwright).

I'm sorry, I think I just fell into a rage blackout. Can you repeat that?

[robinmc.livejournal.com]

I hope the football team gets its ass kicked but good by everyone it plays. What bullshit.

[chulacabra.livejournal.com]

The reason college professors lurve sports so much is because it's a magnet for fundraising. Alumni love to throw money at schools for sports-related goodies: free tickets, homecoming weekend parties, swag like football jerseys, etc. It's ridiculous but it's the truth.

But in this case, an even bigger and scarier issue is that based on what I've read, BSC may be insolvent. As in not enough money to keep the school open. Holy crap. Where the hell was the board of directors through all this?

[sabra-n.livejournal.com]

But in a lot of cases, the schools spend so much on facilities, recruiting, coaches, etc. that even with the fund-raising bump they just don't get it back. The vast majority of football teams aren't...Notre Dame, or whatever the other big-brand teams are.

Basically, football just makes money for football. Not for the rest of the college or university.

[mixedbreedwolf.livejournal.com]

I went to a football high school and it was pure misery and hell. I was lucky enough to got to a real school for college where people care about academics. What is happening to your old school is atrocious. Its beyond disgusting and cruel to the students who needed an escape from whatever personal hell they may have been forced to endure so far. You go and stand before the world. What you have written so far means so much to me and I'm sure thousands of others. Please keep it up and help keep the fight going against the tyrannical idiots who think sports is the most important thing in the world and systematically are dropping standards to allow a bunch of fucking meat heads to pass and be cruel to others. Did I mention this is why I hate Frats? Truly, your what you are doing is beautiful. Keep it up!

[mollywobbles867.livejournal.com]

I went to a football high school too and I was a choir nerd. Yeah, we got NO support. Our performance dresses were hand-sewn by a group of mothers my freshman year.

Thankfully, even though my uni has a football team, no one gave two shits about it. The biggest sports focus was on basketball, but I never felt like it interfered with academic life.

[vertical-sky.livejournal.com]

They cut computer science and accounting?? Aren't those two of the few majors that still have job prospects in this economy??

Even for idiot people who argue this school should have a football team, cutting programs like that is just... insane.

[swordmage.livejournal.com]

Yep!

The better half has a mining engineering degree and the biggest reason he's got a damned good job right now is that he has a com. sci. associate's.

I, on the other hand, have an art history bachelor's and am working on my master's in information resources and library science, and hearing about the dismal job prospects for many classmates.

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

Birmingham-Southern was one of the schools I was accepted by early this year, but they screwed up my paperwork so badly that I had to default to University of Alabama at the last possible moment (I had less than forty-eight hours to make the choice when Birmingham-Southern made their final, fatal blunder). I was crushed and made sour grapes of it all by telling my friends I really didn't want to go to a school with the initials "BS" anyway. Now I'm realising I nearly booked tickets on the Titanic.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Jesus. I loved the school as it was ten years ago, but yeah. I would not recommend anyone go to it right now, particularly if people are afraid it can't even stay solvent.

[profbutters.livejournal.com]

Sigh. This is happening everywhere, but of course that does not help. One of my favorite colleagues, the head of the theater department, just dropped dead of a heart attack. I am almost certain that the stress of trying to keep the theater department and the theater major together over the last couple of years was a strong factor. At my school, it doesn't even go into football. It goes right into the pockets of the administration. And this is also a state university.

I don't know what can be done about it. But it definitely sounds like the kind of bullshit going on everywhere in academia.

[himhilien.livejournal.com]

*hugs you*

[himhilien.livejournal.com]

That's a load of bullshit! *hugs you*

[vertical-sky.livejournal.com]

PS: I'm proud that my alma mater has a football team only as an excuse to have an awesome marching band (the music department at my school gets an INSANE amount of money... last year they toured in Italy and southern France.)

[swordmage.livejournal.com]

I'm well aware of how broad a generalization this is, but:

I really, really dislike athletics in an academic setting. My high school was a nice, little, liberal arts one, and as I've left I've seen/heard it becoming much more athletic-based. I feel like I'm glad I graduated when I did, in part because the athletic-focused bent doesn't sit well with me. And as for my University? Well, it's got one of the biggest/loudest men's basketball teams in the country (if I recall correctly), and the football team is an insane deal as well. Sure, there's the school newspaper and the daily "what's up today?" email, but once athletic season starts, that's pretty much the news of the day and all anyone cares about, it seems. (Well, unless there's something going on with Mars or something.) Nothing like seeing the budget for some departments, watching massive internal re-structuring going on, and then seeing how much the coaches are getting paid.

Pretty much, I feel that the majority of people at a school are there for academics, and athletics really can be something of a detriment in the end. I know that in some cases they're kind of self-funding, in that they raise money for themselves, and that money goes back. I can also see the big draw, in that they do bring in money from alumni. But at the same time, I hate how, as seen here, in many cases it also seems to come at the cost of other programs that, really, in the long run, have much more value.

After all, how many athletes are really going to make it pro? And do we give a damn about that teeny-tiny percentage anyway? I sure as hell don't.

edited because i realized i left out a large chunk of what i wanted to say/meant.

[hopeandmemory.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, I feel that the majority of people at a school are there for academics, and athletics really can be something of a detriment in the end

I agree. I was discussing with my sister today that college sports are all well and good, but they seem to become the focal point, especially in larger schools (she's at Syracuse, which has an insane basketball team), to the point where these schools don't follow the rules they set for academic eligibility to play, etc. To be honest, I don't think a C average is good enough; you are not in college to play sports, you are in college to learn something. I really think you ought to have a B or higher average to play at the varsity level. If you want to play that badly, you'll make it happen.

I go to a small, private liberal arts school in New England where sports are reasonably important (particularly when squash season rolls around, holy crap), but the academic curriculum is really rigorous. (Of course, most people in the area just know us as a crazy party school. You want to have a good time, just go to Trinity... *eyeroll*) Of course, the fact that the administration is cutting adjunct faculty left and right, not to mention financial aid programs such as the Presidential Scholars program, etc, is doing a spectacular job of destroying that one little ray of light we have left. >:(

[starlady42.livejournal.com]

Same sort of thing's happening at UAH: http://www.scribd.com/doc/31748665/UAH-Faculty-Letter

(minus the football team, the lack of which was a specific condition of UAH becoming a separate institution from UA)

French was already on its way out when I was there -- I had to change majors because there weren't enough courses making enrollment for me to take the French major. :( Then it was combined with the other foreign languages into a single department. Then that department was merged with Communication Arts (which lost the Computer-Mediated Communication cognate program at the same time). Also, the president is an enormous asshat who pushed through a regulation that all freshmen had to live on-campus, despite UAH's history as a commuter school. And they wonder why enrollment is down...

err, sorry to make this a ME TOO post, but... I sympathize :(

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

Dude, they are dropping like flies. UA is going to be like Sauron.

[elbales]

HEAD ASSPLODE, with the emphasis on ass. I'm a faculty brat, and a teacher myself, and this kind of shit makes me BALLISTIC.

Oh, also? I went to Mills College. You know, not a GIRLS' SCHOOL without MEN, but a WOMEN'S COLLEGE without BOYS, because that is how we roll. At least, we almost didn't roll, because we too were hemorrhaging money in 1989 when I started there, and the Board of Trustees of the time decided in their infinite nonexistent wisdom that the fix for this problem was not to take the problem to the, you know, alumnae, who include people like Rep. Barbara Lee and April Glaspie and Trisha Brown (and many of whom go on after graduation to make assloads of money and would probably have put forth $$$ if the option had been put forth properly), but to piss away the brand by turning Mills into yet another small coed liberal arts college, not like we don't have enough of THOSE in California, and the students said, collectively, OH NO YOU DI-N'T, and shut down the campus for two weeks and forced them to reconsider.

The alumnae ponied up a lot of money to save Mills as a women's college, is what I'm saying. And Mills today is in mighty fine shape. May's commencement speaker was Nancy Pelosi.

Students at BSC need to make noise, and they need to make it now. It may already be too late, though; it's not like you can, you know, get a refund for your brand-new moronic football stadium.

I'm so sorry, Cleo. This is just Bad, with a capital BAD.

[morallydiseased.livejournal.com]

Your story sounds similar to what my undergrad went through. Wilson College had made plans to close in 1979 I believe. The students got together with the alumnae and the faculty and sued the college to stay open. They won too. Wilson's stayed open ever since.
Wilson is also a women's college. They accept men into the continuing education program, but they have to be over the age of 24. These men are rarely seen. I know they exist, but none of them were in my degree.
I have a shirt that says "I don't go to a Girl's School without Men. I go to a Women's College without Boys." It's one of the best selling shirts on campus.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

I'm so very, very sorry for you (and your old school).

I've long held the opinion that Phil Knight and/or Nike should just buy the U of O Ducks outright and cut out the university as the middleman.

[greedyskunk.livejournal.com]

We at Oregon State have often thought this.

ANGRY ABOUT THIS NEWS

[castleatmydoor.livejournal.com]

THIS MAKES ME ANGRY.

I DON'T LIVE ANYWHERE CLOSE TO ALABAMA BUT THIS MAKES ME SO ANGRY.

I live in a city that is liberal, and is one of the nicest smartest places to live. A lot of people don't move away to live somewhere else when they grow up. But if you go even SLIGHTLY out of this specified city, the world becomes scary. I really, really feel for you. I can't even imagine loosing a safe haven... of any sort.

Re: ANGRY ABOUT THIS NEWS

[darksumomo.livejournal.com]

A lot of people don't move away to live somewhere else when they grow up. But if you go even SLIGHTLY out of this specified city, the world becomes scary.

Sounds like Ann Arbor, but it isn't. I've been able to find nice places in Michigan that aren't Ann Arbor. I know, I'm in one now.

On the other hand, it could be worse. You could be living in Austin, Texas, which has what you have on steroids.

[fabricdragon.livejournal.com]

oh my God.........
that HORRID!

look.... on a PURELY practical matter, cutting Dance, French and German as majors may make sense.....
cutting accounting and comp sci? suicidal.

and sounds like they are lying through their teeth about finances and hoping the football team will save them, which is a recipe for disaster because the insentive to pass the ball players..... welll....

[elisamaza76.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'm sorry to be the random stranger that comments on your page, but this got me riled up.

Given how anti-humanities US culture has become, I can see them cutting French. Given how piss-poor we are at funding the arts, I can see them cutting dance. But how, are they justifying cutting computer science?

I should note that, as a humanities PhD with a love of the arts, I don't *agree* with cutting dance and French, but I can, sadly, hear in my head how some of my own colleagues would justify it.

But let's go back to the part where they discovered they'd be giving away extra money for years. WHAT THE HELL?! When I was a grad student, my university gave me $250 extra dollars once, and I really thought they were going to send somebody in a black van to beat me up and take it back. And you mean to tell me that no one noticed this? No one?! FOR YEARS?!

Ri-got-damn-diculous.

[allova.livejournal.com]

Man, that is so not cool. I completely sympathise with your rage. The English department at my university (I'm not in the US) was absolutely hamstrung by budget cuts for most of time I was an undergrad because they were paying for a big fancy new business school. While it was never as bad as what happened to your school, I was still not impressed by how our department could barely afford to operate in the last year of my first degree.

[profbutters.livejournal.com]

I used to refer to the big-ass fancy new Business School building at University of Wisconsin-Madison as "the temple of Mammon." This is what they get for taking money from Big Hot Dog.

[shu-shu-sleeps.livejournal.com]

That seriously sucks big time - I can understand why you are not happy. It doesn't seem to be such a problem over here in Australia though - because we don't have the sporting culture determining the funding of our universities. I think the two universities I attended (undergrad and then graduate studies) both had football teams (and soccer teams) but it was just an extra curricular activity, not a mainstream program. I'm pleased to report neither of them rechannelled money from academia into sports facilities or programs. So as your colleges get rid of real academic programs, people can always look overseas for educational options....

[hulamoth.livejournal.com]

So as your colleges get rid of real academic programs, people can always look overseas for educational options....
is happening! We can't all be UT Austin with budgets the size of the moon to accommodate sports AND arts AND academia AND the surrounding Travis County.

My sister is a jock. I made sure to take a sports class each semester because I firmly believe that exercise helps stabilize moods and stimulate brain activity. I am so SO ok with schools having some sports programs. I am ok with schools having specialized programs to turn students into professional athletes or gym instructors! But that's the point: specialties. If a school specializes in liberal arts then by shifting the focus to something else like sports you're not saving the school you're gutting its soul.