The president is god, and I am chopped liver?

There is explicit abuse of power and privilege.  Yes. But then there are plenty of subtle ways in which that power and privilege are abused.

An example?  A few months ago, the immediate past-president of the university where I teach authored an opinion piece in the Oregonian.   It was on the politically controversial topic of children of illegal immigrants.  I was happy he wrote that because we need to discuss this issue as a society--as Oregonians, and as Americans.  Of course, I have my own concerns on this topic. 

Authoring such an opinion piece is not any abuse of power and privilege at all.

An example of a subtler abuse of the office that one holds is the following email from the provost of the university:

Many of you may have seen today's Oregonian and noted the opinion piece written by President Minahan.  For those of you who have not read the guest editorial, I have copied the link below and I encourage you to read it.

Not kosher at all to treat the newspaper op-ed as official university business, especially when it is on such a controversial hot-button issue!

If the provost's email in the context of the president's op-ed was out of a professional interest to trigger discussions, then he ought to have sent similar emails before and after the president's emails, right?  After all, day in a day out, there are plenty of opinions being written on critical aspects of higher education.  But, that was not ever the case.

As I tell my students, evidence strengthens arguments.  So, here is one example: a few days prior to that, I had authored this op-ed on higher education in the same newspaper, in which I wrote:

the only beneficiaries are colleges and universities that are, naturally, recording enrollment increases -- even in my classes in the summer. This enrollment growth then triggers the need for additional facilities, which necessitates a demand for more money from students and taxpayers.

Such a higher educational system cannot go on forever. As economist Herbert Stein famously remarked, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."

Imagine if the provost had urged the campus to read that op-ed, too!  Ha!

A few hours after that op-ed was published, a faculty colleague emailed me and the dean of the college:

That was an excellent piece in the paper this morning.  I, too, feel that the objective of a university education must be to encourage intellectual growth rather than simply being a minimal qualifier for employment.  We have community colleges for that purpose.  My observation has been that many, if not most, WOU students are intellectually adrift.  We, as an institution, can help young people discover significance.  I believe that should be our mission.

Guess what?  There was no response from the dean.  The silence was simply deafening. 

But then, I am not the president who authored an op-ed, right?  After all, all my work is nothing but mashed potatoes :)

As I think back, I do wonder if the provost sending that kind of an all-campus email was an attempt to set himself up for the presidency!

Am in candyland :)

Perhaps I blogged a tad too early about not getting cookies or cards from students this term.

One student, "J," emails me:

With the stacks of finals that I saw in your office, you've got a looong session of reading ahead of you! Breaks are a gooood thing!    I'm making candy today- will you be on campus Friday before noon?

Thus, I missed out on the candy!

Not even an hour after that email--57 minutes later, to be exact--was another email from a student, C," who wanted to know when I will be in my office for her to drop off something for me.  When I replied that I would not be in again until the new year, she followed up with:

That is too bad; I had a nice note and some chocolate to give you. I will just paste the note here so at least you get that:

Sriram,

I wanted to thank you for such a challenging, educational, and supportive term! At times I felt as though I wanted to give up.  [I deleted the personal matters,]   Through all of that, I feel more accomplished after this term. Your course taught me a lot. I found myself talking about the class material with my colleagues and family. They too found it interesting. I feel proud of the work I produced [more deleted]

I am the youngest child of five, and the only one to go to college  [more deleted]

Thank you for being so supportive over the last 2 years while I tried to finish this course. I do not know if any other professor would have done the same. I know you once said it is about our education, and part of your job is to facilitate that learning. You also said, that years from now it won't matter what grade we get in this course; what will matter is the knowledge we took from it.

How awesome it is to get such emails, right?  A lucky guy, I am!

I wish "C" and "J" and "I" and everybody else a wonderful life.

Terrorists can kill. Congress and President want to take away your freedom!

So, there I was taking a break from grading, which was a good idea.  The bad?  The Daily Show was also about the pathetic Congressional bipartisanship, and the Executive, on taking away away our freedom, which I had earlier blogged about. 

Hey students, your papers are such a relief compared to the insanity in the world outside :)

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No cookies nor cards. But, compliments, yes :)

It is not my fault, but is that of a few students who have trained me to expect them!  I am being Pavlovian here :)

Anyway, a follow-up to my note from yesterday; At the end of the ten-pager paper, was the following:

It has been a pleasure taking your class and I have truly learned the most out of this class than probably any other college course that I have taken.  So thank you for everything that you have opened my mind up to. Have a good winter break.

Thanks!

In my classes, I am one of those highly interactive guys who gets to know students really well.  Which is why I know that the note is sincere.

So, yes, my tongue-in-cheek comments about cookies and cards aside, I value such feedback a lot.

Again, my expectations go up: after all, I am merely halfway through the papers that I have to read and grade.  I wonder if there might be more such comments in the rest of the papers?  :)

Thoughts about a Neyveli neighbor whose studies, and life, ended prematurely :(

As I recall the life thirty-plus years ago, there were four kids in the second house from our home.  The eldest was three years older than me. The youngest was way younger than me.

The other two kids were respectively one year older and a year younger than me--in terms of the school years, at least.  The older one was Thavamani, and Gopal was my junior.  Gopal would come over once in a while to play cricket with my brother and me.  He was way too good for us, and could smash sixes and boundaries at will.

Whenever I went to Gopal's home, Thavamani had a wonderful smile--she seemed to be always in a good mood.  She exuded self-confidence, which made an impression on me given my nature that I would years later learn to be a Rodney Dangerfield syndrome :)

In the structure that was changed only recently, there were nation-wide exams even at the end of the tenth.  It was quite a stressful event for most who cared--and, thankfully, I never did, which is why even now my mother often asks "how come I never saw you study when you were in school?"

When the results were announced, as much as I couldn't care about rankings, I was excited for Thavamani--she had the third highest aggregate scores.

But, it was a very short-lived excitement when I learnt that Thavamani would study no more--the family had decided that it was time she got married.

I was shocked.  With my sister off in college, I had grown up with an idea that both boys and girls were equals and they both went to college, especially the academically smart ones.  And, yet, here was a student with a distinguished academic record whose formal education had come to a screeching halt.

I had to process all these by myself--on top of the culture that didn't encourage discussions, particularly on such practices, I was not an extroverted kid anyway.  It was a rude awakening for the fourteen-year old that I was.  I suppose there might have been a million other things in her life that I don't know of, for the elders in Thavamani's life to have decided on that kind of a travel plan for her.  But, still ...

Thavamani soon had a baby, and clearly was off on a different trajectory altogether.  I have this hazy image in my mind of Thavamani and her infant kid, but then I worry that my mind is playing tricks on me. 

A few years later, I heard from my family that Thavamani had died.

How fantastic it will be if a schoolmate read this and were to email me, "hey moron, your memory is all messed up.  Thavamani was not even your neighbor. She is alive, and went on to earn her PhD, and here is her contact info."

War on Christmas! "Yeah, we're open"

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Term ends. No cookies or cards from students :(

A few years ago, a student turned in a kind of funny poem about me and my class along with the final exam paper.  Since then, every term, I behave like a kid searching through the cereals for the toy in the box--I flip through the pages to see if there is any poem or a special note in appreciation.

But, of course, this is rare.  A couple of terms ago, one student made a flip-book of sorts in the exam blue book; it was cool to read at the end that he enjoyed the course and my teaching.

Last Spring, a student gave a $10 Starbucks gift card as a thank you.  Knowing my fondness for coffee, he thought I would make use of that as compared to other kind of gifts. I am yet to spend it: the gift is worth way more than the $10 and coffee, as far as I am concerned.  The card has been in my wallet all these months as a reminder of sorts.

If only students knew how much of an excitement it is for me, and a disappointment it is when there is nothing :(

Nothing this term. No poem.  No thank-you gift.  No cookies. No nothing.  Well, not anything tangible. I did get plenty of spontaneous student feedback on how much they enjoyed the classes and my teaching style.

And, I got invited to a student's wedding, which will be in June.

Earlier this morning, I did get compliments of a totally different kind when a student said, as handed me his paper, "this 100-level class had a lot more work, in terms of reading and writing, than all my other classes put together.  And those are upper division classes"

I pumped up both my arms like a football referee signaling a touchdown.  We both laughed.

As I think about my own years as a student, all the way from when I was a kid to my doctoral days, I now regret that I never conveyed my appreciation to some of the teachers who were wonderful teachers.  Much later in life, I have emailed more than once to a couple of my graduate school professors ... you know, better late than never.

Now, back to that poem ... here is the ultimate tragedy of all: I seem to have misplaced it!

Wyden and Merkley make us Oregonians proud. Bravo, Senators!

A follow-up to an earlier post, on how the Congress is wonderfully bipartisan when it comes to stripping away our Constitutional rights; as this editorial in the Oregonian points out:

only one state had both of its senators voting no, on the theory that the constitutional right to a trial by jury actually means that a trial should have a jury.

"Somebody might think that the Bill of Rights is a quaint idea," explained Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "We think it matters."

Or as Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., pointed out, sounding awfully picky, "The government can sweep you up, and the government decides whether you get to see a lawyer. You are now an enemy combatant under the rules the government sets up and good luck."

Oregon. Things look different here. 

Yes, indeed.

BTW, here is how I can add to another post, which was about how we might already be at war against Iran; here is Glenn Greenwald:

One last point about these we-are-at-War! advocates: The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg yesterday compiled establishment news reports documenting the multiple acts of war directed at Iran: explosions, murders of their scientists, cyber warfare, and he asked: Is Iran Already Under Attack by some combination of the U.S. and Israel? I wrote about the same question earlier this week in the context of Roger Cohen’s New York Times column which essentially argued (and celebrated) that the U.S. and Israel are already waging a covert war against Iran (Cohen wrote that it “would take tremendous naïveté to believe these events are not the result of a covert American-Israel” effort). Just consider how amazing that is: so war-obsessed is America’s political and media culture that it seems indisputably clear that the U.S. Government — in total secrecy, without any remote legal basis — is involved to some unknown degree in multiple acts of war against Iran, and nobody seems to notice or care or even want to know what the U.S. Government is doing in this regard. If you feel like you need to attack countries in total secrecy, Mr. Commander-in-Chief, go ahead: no need even to tell us. That is what this we-are-at-War! mindset produces.

Yep, why not suspend the Constitution entirely, so that we can have a government that will do nothing but wage war--including against its own citizens too!

When college professors dream ...

Wal-Mart in India? What about mom-and-pop stores?

More here on the stalled retail reform in India

"You're cutting edge!" ... A student's compliments make my day :)

A student, "K," emails me:

You're cutting edge! Found an article about a university that gives grants to profs to make their own work available for courses so students don't have to pay an arm and a leg for text books! Interesting concept, just thought I would let you know again how much I (We, if I can speak for the college student in general) appreciate the fact that you let us learn in an economically friendly way!

Very, very rarely anymore do I use books for the courses I teach.  Instead, I make use of academic journal articles that are accessible electronically through the university's library, and an array of freely available online readings, and audio and video materials.

Not only because it is wallet-friendly for students, but also--and more importantly--because using books is so much old-style, and using textbooks is nearly primitive, for the kinds of courses I teach.

But, doing what I do is hard work because I need to be constantly on the lookout for materials that I can use in my courses.  After all, it is so much easier to merely use a textbook or two.

In addition to that kind of work, I have to deal with reactionaries--the faculty, in particular.

Five years ago, the then president of the faculty union here led an effort against online course offerings.  Yes, against.

In my reply (November 11, 2006!) I wrote in support of offering more and more online courses, and went beyond that issue alone:

I would argue that course materials belong in the intellectual commons, and not behind walls that prevent access. 

Over the past few years, I have been impressed with two important approaches in particular:

1. The idea of "Creative Commons" that Lawrence Lessig champions. 

2. MIT's venture into "opencourseware".

I am not sure if it was Lessig who started Creative Commons, but it was from one of his talks a few years ago that I became aware of it.  (More info at http://creativecommons.org/) 

This approach appeals to me because I think the more we make ideas available for everybody, the more humans progress.  I don't think that all our progress has come out of material incentives alone, which is what complex intellectual property rights regimens attempt to do.

A similar, and in fact related, venture is MIT's OpenCourseWare.  (More info at http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html)

When it was launched I remember thinking, hey, this is why the Web is fantastic: we can easily makes things available for free and easy access to people wherever they might be.  This is all the more the case when it comes to distributing knowledge to people in resource-constrained countries, which are quite a few in this world.

MIT's approach has catalyzed the development of the "Opencourseware Consortium".  (More info at http://www.ocwconsortium.org/) It has now become a world-wide effort to pool together the academic knowledge.   

... 

I also hope that the union would urge the OUS campuses to join the OpenCourseware Consortium, if a campus is already not a member.

In sending that kind of a reply, I was consistent with what I always tell students: provide evidence for your arguments, and don't simply try to dazzle me with rhetoric.  

The reply from the faculty union president was nothing but hot rhetoric; a tragic irony, given that he is a philosophy professor :)

The union isn't against online courses, or intellectual commons, but you are proceeding from a false assumption.  The material posted for online courses is not part of some intellectual commons - it is owned by the University.  They charge students money for access to it.  Under the current system, if they so desired, they could get you to do an online course once, then hire an adjunct to teach your material ad infinitum and never give you the chance to teach it again.  They could forgo adding full-time tenure-track positions to your department (in fact, they do that already!), and teach classes on the cheap using your materials and perpetual adjuncts.  They could even reduce the number of tenure-track faculty, replacing them with adjuncts.  Colleges and Universities all over the country are in fact doing this.  We want the University to add full-time tenure-track faculty (with Ph.D.s) to meet student demand, and they don't want to do it because better qualified people cost more per class.

 

This isn't about intellectual commons - it is about universities being able to exploit faculty, especially adjuncts, and about ensuring the highest quality of instruction. 

Seriously, did he not see a major flaw in his own argument?  If the worry is about the university packaging up a course content and having an adjunct teach it ad infinitum, and eliminate the need for full-time faculty, then couldn't the university simply make use of the wide range of course materials, including syllabi, from  prestigious universities like MIT, which provide the same materials for free through the OperCourseWare project, instead of commissioning me to develop them? 

The net result: students, like the one who emailed me, are severely shortchanged by faculty who believe that higher education is only about them, instead of focusing on the only thing that really matters: student learning.

I suppose all I need is an email or two from students, and that is enough to make a Don Quixote out of me tilting at the academic windmills :)

Thank you, "K."

ps: the news item that "K" came across, which prompted her to email me?  This one:

the University of Massachusetts at Amherst recently launched the Open Education Initiative, which will award grants to faculty members seeking to develop low- or no-cost course materials as an alternative to traditional textbooks.

Hmmm .... I didn't even get a grant to do what I have been doing for years :)

The news item also adds this:

Librarian Marilyn Billings says the project will eventually aim to make open education resources “accessible to anyone, anywhere.” 

I wonder whether the faculty union leaders read such materials at all!

Or, perhaps those "leaders" serve as classic examples of Kahneman's "illusion of validity"

(Mis)spellings and (embarrassing) humor. The awful English language

One small error, as the finger slipped over one key on to another, and what a difference it makes!

All I wanted to ask a friend was "may I bug you for a sec?"

Now, take a look at the keyboard, if you cannot immediately visualize the layout.  Notice the letters adjacent to "c."

If a finger were to miss the "c" and were to end up on one of the keys in that neighborhood, the possible words, in place of "sec," are:

sed
sef
sev
sex

Yep, of all the typos, it was "sex" and the chat message became "may I bug you for a sex?"

Such situations are nearly cliched jokes in sitcoms and movies, but are terribly embarrassing in real life.  The only way out is to recognize the error, LOL, and move on.

Or, blog about it also!  A public confession!

Speaking of "public" ... Reminds me of my days in school in India, when we got to learn about human anatomy in the biology class.

True to my nerdy nature, there I was scanning through the biology textbook chapters in order to get a feel for the topics yet to be discussed in class, when I could have been doing so many other things.  I was stumped; I simply could not fathom why they had to name the hair around the, ahem, private parts as "public hair."

For days on, I chuckled about what I thought was one hilarious joke concocted by biologists with a sense of humor.

And then, one day, it struck me--there was no "l" in the spelling.  It was not "public" after all and the joke was on me!

After that discovery, I became terribly self-conscious when I had to use the word "public" because I became painfully aware of what the word might mean if I were to miss the "l" in spelling it.

Now, I will have to worry about "sec."

Damn the English language, eh!

Scariest comment of the day: War underway against Iran and its nukes

Jeffrey Goldberg:

Following a (perhaps not-so-mysterious) explosion on a military base last month that took with it the life of Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam--one of the Iranian missile program's most distinguished OGs--comes news of a second explosion in Isfahan this past Monday, which according to sources "struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran."

Of course, accurate news out of Tehran is hard to come by, but if you want to take this a step further, one might consider Tuesday's (perhaps not-so-spontaneous) storming of the British embassy by Iranian "students" to be quite an effective smokescreen in keeping news of this second explosion from making serious waves. If you've had a lot of coffee, it's also worthy to note that on Monday evening, following the explosion in Iran, four missiles fired from southern Lebanon struck Israel--the first such incident in over two years.

I'm not entirely convinced, but it's not unreasonable to group these recent explosions with the Stuxnet virus of last summer that haywired an uranium enrichment facility in Natanz; last October's explosion at a Shahab missile factory; the killing of three Iranian nuclear scientists in the past two years, last November's attempted assassination of Fereydoun Abbasi-Davan--a senior official in the nuclear program -- and rumblings of a second supervirus deployed this month as proof that the West's war on Iran's nuclear program is getting less covert by the minute.

 Even if we dismiss Golderbg's comments, how about this news report:

Israeli newspapers declared last week that Israel's war with Iran already had begun, but that the Jewish state, rather than launch massive airstrikes, had decided on a method of covert action in cooperation with other groups. Statements by current and former Israeli officials were being parsed for clues but did little to clarify the issue.
"There aren't many coincidences, and when there are so many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps it's the hand of God," said Israel's former head of internal security, Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said: "We are not happy to see the Iranians move ahead on this (program), so any delay, be it divine intervention or otherwise, is welcome."

Or, this one from The Telegraph that "Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been put on a war footing:"

Western intelligence officials said the Islamic Republic had initiated plans to disperse long-range missiles, high explosives, artillery and guards units to key defensive positions.

The order was given in response to the mounting international pressure over Iran’s nuclear programme. Preparation for a confrontation has gathered pace following last month’s report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna that produced evidence that Iran was actively working to produce nuclear weapons.

The Iranian leadership fears the country is being subjected to a carefully co-ordinated attack by Western intelligence and security agencies to destroy key elements of its nuclear infrastructure.

Does it not seem that the Iranians downing an US drone that apparently strayed into its airspace is related to all these?

The Durban Debacle. Or, Durban Disaster. Or, ...

You pick your choice of alliteration. Jagdish Bhagwati calls it Deadlock in Durban.

First, the United States under Obama's ineffective leadership has drifted yet further into a "What's in it for me?" attitude on key issues requiring international action. In place of what the economist Charles Kindleberger once called an "altruistic hegemon", the US that the world now faces is what I call a "selfish hegemon".

The second problem is that the sheer weight of the US in international affairs, though diminished nowadays, has nonetheless led to a corruption of the principles that should underpin a new climate-change treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

Ah, the US!  The "selfish hegemon" indeed!  

That is where the $100bn Global Climate Change Fund, promised at the Cancun COP-16 conference, comes in. Unfortunately, even environmental icons such as Al Gore in the US are so heavily invested in new green technology that their self-interest is tied up in this fund being spent on developing privately owned new technologies that are protected by patents.

The new "Green Revolution" seeds that the Nobel laureate agronomist Norman Borlaug developed with public money were freely available to all users anywhere. The technology developed by the money spent from the Global Climate Change Fund also should be equally available to all, including India and China, which would then enable them to agree to more emissions cuts.

Indeed, even the contributions to the fund should have reflected the past damage by the developed countries over the course of a century of carbon emissions - an obligation based on the well-established tort principle that the US has accepted for domestic pollution. But here, too, the US has rejected the idea outright.

I can't see the next elections making the US any more cooperative with the rest of the world.  Even if re-elected, we are looking at a lame-duck Obama with a divided Congress.  And with continued sluggishness in the economy, discussions on the global environment will not an agenda item even for the most insignificant subcommittee!

Naturally, the US position has not earned new friends:

The letter, signed by 16 different organisations and sent to the US Secretary of State, said that while President Barack Obama pledged in November 2008 to "engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global co-operation on climate change," he had failed to deliver on that pledge.

Instead, the letter claimed, America is fast becoming seen as a "major obstacle" to progress.

Signatories included Greenpeace USA, the Natural Resources Defence Council, Oxfam America, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the World Wildlife Fund.

Shortly after it was made public, the European Union delegation at the summit criticised the US for "overlooking the facts" on the risk of climate change and suggested it was not doing enough at home to live up to its promises to cut carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, the ex-UN climate chief describes the talks as "rudderless:"

Yvo de Boer said he left his job as the U.N.'s top climate official in frustration 18 months ago, believing the process of negotiating a meaningful climate agreement was failing. His opinion hasn't changed.

"I still have the same view of the process that led me to leave the process," he told The Associated Press Sunday. "I'm still deeply concerned about where it's going, or rather where it's not going, about the lack of progress."

Ron Bailey calls it "Delusional in Durban"

The likelihood of draft proposals that require deep greenhouse gas emissions cuts by rich countries being adopted here in Durban is exactly nil.

 Dummies in Durban, eh!  

Socrates dead!

The Brazilian soccer star, thanks to whom even a football nincompoop like me stayed up late in the night to watch the World Cup, has died:

He had been in a critical condition with an intestinal infection since being admitted to intensive care on Friday at a hospital in Sao Paulo.
Socrates, who was widely regarded as one of the greatest ever midfielders, was moved onto a life support machine on Saturday.
He played in two World Cups, won 60 caps for his country between 1979 and 1986 and scored 22 goals.

The following is what I had blogged a year-plus ago:

All I remember from that World Cup was one name: Socrates.  It was a simply awesome tournament ... TV was just about being introduced then in the part of India where I lived, and it was the good ol' newspaper and radio that we had to work with.  I wonder if that made it all the more exciting, come to think of it ...

Guess what happened to Socrates?

Sócrates is a doctor of medicine, a rare achievement for a professional footballer (he is a graduate of the Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto). Even rarer is the fact that he earned the degree while concurrently playing professional football. There are persistent rumours that Sócrates turned out for the University College Dublin. However, the player himself has denied this saying that he has never even been to Dublin^{[citation needed]}.
He is also noted for being an intellectual (he holds a doctorate degree in philosophy), a heavy drinker and smoker, and for his height (193 cm, 6 ft 4 in).

Dev Anand and Socrates on the same day :(

Image of the day: Dev Anand

Separate the leadership of different universities

(Op-ed published in the Statesman Journal, December 4th)

The firing of Richard Lariviere from his job as the president of the University of Oregon will be discussed for a long time.

As we engage in debates, there is one fundamental issue that we Oregonians have to resolve well before hiring a successor: Should UO, and perhaps Portland State and Oregon State too, be spun off the Oregon University System (OUS) with a separate governance system?

From the day I was hired to teach at Western Oregon University back in 2002, I have wondered at the logic (or lack thereof) in having an OUS that governs both UO and WOU. After all, WOU is what one would refer to as a "teaching university" while UO is a "research university" and the missions of these two institutions are very different.

It is not that UO faculty do not engage in teaching — they do. But, at research universities, the expectation is that faculty will devote significant effort into systematically creating new ways in which we understand the world.

The metaphorical earth-shattering scholarship in the sciences and the arts happen at research universities, and that is the yardstick with which we would then measure the "worth" of a research university like UO. Thus, it is no surprise that faculty who gain membership into prestigious bodies like the National Academy of Sciences are from research universities, and not from teaching universities.

In the American higher education system, the typical expectation is that teaching universities like WOU have a markedly different role. Pretty much all of our work is about teaching at the undergraduate level. Nobel Prize winners are, therefore, not to be found in teaching universities, even when they are phenomenal teachers, as many of them are.

When there is such a wide gulf between what is expected at UO versus WOU, I am always surprised that both these institutions are governed by the same board.

When I joined WOU, the OUS had a new chancellor in Richard Jarvis. He was a geographer and taught an introductory physical geography class for us — for free, as I recall. But even before his second-year anniversary on the job, Jarvis was fired rather abruptly because the then-governor, Ted Kulongoski, wanted to set a new direction for higher education.

Unfortunately, all I have witnessed in these 10 years is more hirings and firings and the creation of more and more committees, without any directional clarity whatsoever. This decade-long experience makes me conclude that the current crisis is not anything new that Lariviere created, but is the cumulative effect of dilly-dallying.

I can only hope that the termination of Lariviere's contract will compel the governor and the Legislature to settle the issues once and for all.

In working out a plan, they ought to recognize that WOU and its sister regional universities, Eastern Oregon and Southern Oregon universities, are alike in their missions, while UO, PSU and OSU have very different institutional missions. Forcing these institutions to coexist within the same OUS structure will merely prolong the agony, and is the worst possible deal for taxpayers and students.