Architecture Professors and Students Protest Moving Solar Decathlon Off the National Mall

February 15, 2011, 8:36 pm

Since 2002, the Solar Decathlon has drawn people to tour modern, solar homes on the National Mall. But the contest may be held somewhere else this year. (Photos courtesy U.S. Department of Energy)

For architecture and engineering students, the Solar Decathlon is like the Super Bowl of college-design projects. Every two years since 2002, teams from dozens of institutions from around the world have brought their small, superefficient houses to the big lawn on the National Mall. There, policy makers, Beltway journalists, and tourist families from the hinterlands could come and imagine a different future for the American dream home.

But not so this year, it seems. The U.S. Department of Energy, in consultation with the National Park Service, has decided to move the Solar Decathlon off the mall to an unspecified location because of concerns about the impact on the mall lawn and grounds—a decision that has riled students and faculty members who have been involved in the contest.

They say that the National Mall provides a prominent public stage at a time when pundits and politicians—not least among them, Barack Obama—talk about a crucial need for clean energy and renewed American ingenuity.

“It’s a regrettable decision and a heartbreaking decision,” says Daniel S. Friedman, dean of the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington and president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

“It is a unique space, and uniquely public,” he continues. “It’s where we come together as strangers, both commercial and public, for an exchange—and that is what is going on here: an exchange of ideas in a public place, at the steps of the Capitol. Take that away, and you erode the significance of the program.”

A coalition to protest the decision is forming. In a statement regarding the move, the American Institute of Architects said the move would “damage the project’s effectiveness as an educational event for young architects and a vast array of design professionals.” A petition is circulating online, with support from solar-advocacy groups. And student architects have also appeared in a YouTube video appealing to Mr. Obama directly: “Mr. President, we have responded to your call to action,” says one student in the video. “Please put the Solar Decathlon back on the National Mall.” (See that video at the bottom of this page.)

They have been joined by Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, all Democrats, and nine other senators, who signed a letter to Steven Chu, the secretary of energy, and Ken Salazar, the secretary of the interior, urging them to reconsider.

“In his State of the Union Address, President Obama called upon our nation to reach lofty clean energy goals,” the letter said. “To move the Solar Decathlon away from the mall would be sending a mixed signal to the very students who are doing their part to make this lofty goal a reality. ”

The letter also said that the mall is a “focal point” that has hosted Martin Luther King Jr.’s march on Washington, the display of the AIDS quilt, and Mr. Obama’s inauguration. “There is no doubt that events like these caused physical damage to the mall, but their historic, cultural, and political value far outweighed the physical toll they took on the grounds,” the senators wrote. “The same holds true for the Solar Decathlon.”

At press time, the Department of Energy had not responded to questions about the move. A news release from last month said that the decision to pick a new site supported the “historic effort underway to protect, improve, and restore the National Mall,” which had been damaged by large public events. “We recognize the challenges this change may present teams and sponsors, and we appreciate their understanding as we select a new location.” (One rumored new location is the National Harbor, in nearby Maryland.)

But the decision does not just affect the public profile of the contest. Students and faculty members say that the move could complicate the projects financially and technically as well.

A Solar Decathlon house is no small undertaking. College teams can spend $500,000 or more on the project—not just to build the house, but also to transport it in pieces to the display site and to provide lodging for the students who will construct and deconstruct the house, and provide public tours while it’s standing.

The display on the National Mall was a big attraction for corporate and other donors, says Rebecca J. Hagen, an instructor in the School of Mass Communications at the University of South Florida and a faculty adviser to a team that comprises students from South Florida, Florida State University, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Florida.

“People know where the mall is,” she says. “So when we are talking to potential donors, that is off the table as a selling point—and we don’t know if we have an equally big selling point” in another location. Team Florida has landed five-figure donations from energy companies like Florida Power & Light, Progress Energy, TECO Energy, and the Orlando Utilities Commission.

The solar houses for the 2011 competition have been under way for almost two years now—and the location of windows, solar panels, and other features in the designs have been optimized for the specific site on the National Mall.

“It is about studying the coordinates of that location and designing orientations and your solar array to fit that particular area to generate a certain amount of power,” says Melanie L. Hendel, an architecture student at Parsons the New School of Design. She said teams have also designed their houses around specific transportation modes and routes to Washington.

Some people are trying to consider upsides to the possibility of a move. Ms. Hagen, for example, says that Florida gets better sun than Washington anyway. She wonders what might happen if the contest were held near Orlando, where it could attract visitors to Disney World.

Mr. Friedman, meanwhile, is trying to conceive of another possibility: keeping the event on the mall, and repairing the mall at the same time.

“What we could easily do is integrate into the competition itself the responsibility to remediate the site,” he says, adding that landscape-architecture students have been “underrepresented” in the contest so far.

“That would make it more interesting,” he says, “and it would reinforce the principle of living lightly on the land.”

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alexsim

I was in DC a couple of years ago and saw the Solar Decathlon at the Mall. I would never have known about it if it hadn’t been in such a prominent place. I think moving it is a really unwise decision. As for tearing up the grounds, the Mall has been in sad shape for a long time and no one seems to want to fund improving it. It’s a sad commentary on one of the preeminent places in the capitol city of the U.S.
barista

Friedman’s idea, to integrate remediation of the site into the competition, seems a brilliant win-win, especially if the remediation is effective enough to further the projected improvement of the Mall, as conceived by the DOE.
_perplexed_

Is this solar decathalon the same outfit that blocked the participation of Ariel University, because it is located on the West Bank, when the event was held in Spain in 2009?
http://twitter.com/johnandrew80 johnandrew80

This is worth preserving.
tshowo

Remediation of The Mall according to sustainable principles such as those embodied by the Solar Decathlon might look very different from the thirsty, chemical-hungry monoculture of a lawn that exists there now. A proposed design for a more sustainable version of The Mall that still (or even better) fulfills its civic role would really be a win-win.
bkellyumd

@ perplexed: No. This Solar Decathlon is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and is only held in the US.

@ tshowo: In my 30 years of living in DC I have never seen an application of fertilizer to the lawn on the Mall, no less other forms of maintenance. Your statement about monoculture is narrow minded. There is a place for turf, perhaps not everywhere, but the Mall is certainly an appropriate application. Indeed there could be proposals for a more sustainable Mall, but tossing out the turf is not the only option.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Marc-Miller/100000393769971 Marc Miller

As a former Solar Decathlon team member, there a — comments that I would like to point out.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Marc-Miller/100000393769971 Marc Miller

As a former Solar Decathlon team member, there are a few issues that I would like to point out.

The Mall is essentially designed as monoculture, given that a specific turf is specified of installation in order to best ensure at set of performance characteristics that include low maintenance, high resistance to disease, a high level of performance based on multiple types of traffic, and resilience to weeds. Soil quality also poses a potential problem, given the level of compaction and lack of nutrients, preventing successful installation of the specified turf. In addition, the proper re-eastablisment will take far longer than the period allotted for the competition.

Given this, the suggestion that landscape architecture students be more involved with teams to remediate the site after the competition is inappropriate. It suggests that the site conditions on the Mall are akin to a front yard and the simple application of some seeds and water will address the site conditions. It also suggests that the role of the landscape architects is to merely fix the damage created in construction.

Added to that, the comment that landscape architecture students are underrepresented in the competition may be accurate but does not take into account the fact that landscape architecture students have been involved in the competition since the beginning. A range of proposals about how residential landscapes can more actively engage the building envelope, improve performance and mitigate impacts. Despite this, no scored opportunities exist for the innovative application of plant material or sites. Rather than inviting landscape architects to participate iplacing parsley on the pig, inclusion in scoring would be more effective.
finnbarr

Why do most of the poets featured here live in Virginia?
couch

@finnbarr: using the Chronicle search, the previous 21 “Monday’s Poem” columns show these poets; I’ve added their current states of residence. By my count 12 states (& DC) are represented including VA (5), CA (3), NY (2), and MO (2). VA poets hardly make up “most” of the list. The variety is a refreshing change from the usual bicoastal myopia, though the residences of poets, like those of scholars, often have more to do with where they happen to find (transient) grad school places or jobs than with origin or other affiliation, as a look at the bios of the poets below will quickly show. The list:

O’Rourke – NY
Hart – VA
Larsen – VA
Reddy – IL
Fried – MO
Daniels – TN
Teare – CA
Marvin – NY
Cushman – VA
Szybist – OR
Smith – VA
Hillman – Bay area, CA
Klink – Cambridge, MA
Ali – Oberlin, OH
Petrosino – KY
Phillips – MO
Chang – VA
Muske-Dukes – CA
Dargan – DC
Samyn – WV
Baker – OH
http://twitter.com/sciliz Rebecca Weinberg

So… among bright but disadvantaged students, the ones that are capable of embracing the prevailing cultural values system most completely (as evidenced by going to a higher prestige institution) end up succeeding most by the prevailing cultural value (making the most money).
drj50

This essay points the way to a more realistic means of assessing the true value of a college education. Graduates need to know enough of the specifics of economics (or chemistry, or many other disciplines — at least as non-majors) to be critical readers of news resports and, more generally, have good critical thinking skills, but do not need to recall many of the particulars that we ask them to master in a traditional class.

The problem, however, is that this is not the way most courses are taught. We teach them as though all students are building a foundation of knowledge and skills to serve them in more advanced courses in the particular discipline. To take this proposal seriously, we would need to radically revise the way many courses are taught. We would have to identify plainly which facts, concepts and skills are “keepers” and which are primarily exercises in general skills development — and grade accordingly. It would be hard work, that would require faculty with 20-40 years invested emotionally in the details of their disciplines, to fall in love with general learning and make these critical distinctions. But it would pay huge dividends in efficiency and effective learning.

I would love to see this, but I wonder if/when anything remotely like this will ever happen in this country.
hngjohnson

I know there are other arguable perspectives, but all the perspective given here (including comments) argue for a wholesale rethinking of the organization and pedagogy of Higher Ed.
* “all this works better if both the teacher and the students view the subject matter as intrinsically important” I’m sorry, the mind is more than sufficiently subtle to recognize this ruse. The deception is not working.
* lowenstm says; “. . .the outcomes that matter the most aren’t measured within any one course”. Than organizing ed through courses of study will not accidentally get students to the goal you seek.
* In regards #3 above; measurement, to be truly useful, is linked to pedagogy. Measuring more subtle competences means pedagogical change.
And allow me to place one more idea into the mix. Learning needs in the future, by all indication, will be much different from the past. A 4 year course of study make no sense in a world of constant disruption. Students need to be mentored into lifelong networked communities of learning that are embedded in people everyday lives. I still think this is something much different when compared to current practice.
hngjohnson

I know there are other arguable perspectives, but all the perspective given here (including comments) argue for a wholesale rethinking of the organization and pedagogy of Higher Ed.
* “all this works better if both the teacher and the students view the subject matter as intrinsically important” I’m sorry, the mind is more than sufficiently subtle to recognize this ruse. The deception is not working.
* lowenstm says; “. . .the outcomes that matter the most aren’t measured within any one course”. Than organizing ed through courses of study will not accidentally get students to the goal you seek.
* In regards #3 above; measurement, to be truly useful, is linked to pedagogy. Measuring more subtle competences means pedagogical change.
And allow me to place one more idea into the mix. Learning needs in the future, by all indication, will be much different from the past. A 4 year course of study make no sense in a world of constant disruption. Students need to be mentored into lifelong networked communities of learning that are embedded in people everyday lives. I still think this is something much different when compared to current practice.
electronicmuse

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Right on, and beautifully written.

As I tell my students: “If you don’t want to be replaced by a computer-don’t act like a computer!”

I also tell them that during my 25 years of so “in the field” prior to becoming a college prof, nobody every asked “could I see your transcript?” Or, “what was your dissertation topic about?” Out there, it’s about solving problems-not flaunting some “content.” In fact, most theses and dissertations molder in the stacks (or, at least they used to!) The value of any degree, including “advanced” degrees, is the changes they facilitate in the person doing the work.

And, thanks for taking me back to Father Guido Sarducci. How could any of us forget “35, 35, 35, after a while it starts to add up!” Cheers!
richardtaborgreene

Among other things college taught me:
1) I could read the hardest books of science, math, literature, poetry, anthropology, psych research that had ever been written (not with ease but with effort—that is, I need not avoid or fear them)
2) the faculty of my college were systematically neurotic, distorting truth in analytic, mathematic, individualist ways they got while growing up in American culture–if I trusted them and their ways and “learned” those ways in college, I would NOT be able to protect Western culture and the USA from disasters and decline they themselves with their own ways and blindnesses to alternative ways, generated.
3) immense powerful Nobel level skills that I could not hope to match, were built up by years of consistent professional practice—as I observed in faculty around me—THEREFORE I could myself build up immense historic levels of skill the same way—practice reflection practice reflection practice feedback practice reflection
4) knowledge and people were hopelessly splintered by current faculty, corporations, fields of knowledge, publishings, and career paths, SO MUCH SO that ALL major problems were beyond any one produced as grad of any department of any university—universities were in a deep sense THE problem of my era and civilization
5) that the hardest subjects were not nuclear physics, general relativity, quantum gravity—but modern English poetry, multi-national standards-making and policy-making, and similar more soft social psychologic areas
6) that the smartest people at my college were not faculty and the smartest contents were not in courses but rather in research centers run daily by grad students where hour by hour immense skills and reckless experiments abounded, got observed and learned
7) that one could learn a lot even when subjected to absolutely horrible teaching by faculty seldom aware of the origin and purport of what they taught and champing to get back to their labs
8) that one book, if and when it fit one life’s deepest yearnings and mysteries, concerns, could open ten thousand doors and entire new universes of feeling, thought, and action–and one was not ever going to be able to guess ahead of time what book and topic that door opener would be.
9) that somehow universities has lost their educating mission entirely and were merely informing students—faculty seldom responsible for their actual impact on society around them, believing some invisible hand would take 10,000 over priced journals articles and somehow magically make that into a solution to societal problems one could never get tenure by actually addressing.
10) that sex was wasted on young men and women and like tennis it was going to take giant amounts of practice to enjoy it and get good at it, mostly by shutting down programs in us put there by our genes that made the whole thing too automatic, speedy, and a flight from feeling rather than to it.
11) that one had better watch out for one armed female teachers with unbelievably wide and deep reading and a commitment to poking holes in student thinking and expression—a well read person could instantly take all my supposed thought and accomplishment and reduce it to the trash it was, leaving me whole new frontiers of growth to tackle—humiliation was always going to be the door to growth, less painful doors simply did not exist
12) that any field that was new, growing rapidly, or technical meant the faculty were two generations out of date and only grad students could prepare you for current stuff, except in those few BEST colleges where the new stuff was being actively developed on campus by faculty having zero tolerance for, or interest in “teaching”—one could learn a lot without being taught anything from some people
13) that books were better than all lectures, save a few british ones
14) that nearly every thought and feeling that I thought was personal and my own, had been generated in millions by giant forces and changes in society that I was unaware of—my me-ness my most personal feelings were not mine and not really personal—highly disappointing discovery as I remember it
15) AND 50 other things 150 highly educated people told me in some research put into my book Are You Educated? 64 Capabilities of Highly Educated People
richardtaborgreene

Look, if God comes down to some of us, and blesses the ideas we picked up growing up where we grew up, telling us “thou art right and all others be they friend or foe are wrong—thou shalt smite all dis-agreers and smirk haughtily at their error and blindness—thou shalt worship thine own rightness over all else”. Who needs college? We are already declared by God right along with all the happenstance beliefs our moms, and judges, newspapers and local bigots put into us growing up. Who needs college when we are already righter than all others from birth?

Being RIGHTER than all others is the entitlement; college is a waste of time when you are already righter than all others in principle.
quidditas

“That signals a huge and significant concession: The administration is essentially abandoning the idea that the federal government could fund four-year degrees for everyone.”

Yeah, it may be about costs, but I really think it’s more about the potential for community colleges to provide some systematic instruction and support for some of the small business economic activity that you point to, as well as a number of para-professional certifications. These are Alan Blinder’s businesses and jobs “that cannot be off-shored” and community colleges, while frequently serving as transfer sources for more traditionally academic 4 year degrees, are nothing if not pragmatic and sensitive to local economies and student populations, who they are charged to serve (unlike selective institutions that don’t have to).

I find it unlikely that Obama’s main concern is the tea budget when he both fails to adequately re-regulate a criminally out of control financial sector and extends in virtually unedited form the Bush tax cuts heavily slanted toward the most wealthy, and we’re now spending $100 million a day in Libya. It is a bi-artisan Dick Cheney all the time in DC–”deficits don’t matter.” The only time it matters is when they don’t want to support something.

But, I think student debt *might* matter and Obama’s low educational horizon is is more along the lines of the “gainful employment” accountability movement. ie., This is in the area of the financial consumer protection agency promoted by Elizabeth Warren, one of the *only* ostensibly “progressive” ideas that Obama permitted to move forward *at all* during the course of his Administration, however much Timmy the Tax Cheat is seeking to hamstring Warren’s efforts lest it hinder his post-Treasury job prospects.

That’s the optimistic spin. The pessimistic spin is that the gainful employment accountability movement is all for show (as one fears the CFPB is itself) while Fedgov *actually* funnels money to the for-profits under *the pretense* that it is assisting institutions that enable first generation college students to obtain credentials that are directly useful to them, while *also* turning *still more* people into debt servicers for Citibank. This may, in fact, be the correct interpretation as even elected tea potters favor printing money in order to funnel it to the for-profits.

Either way, it’s not about the tea budget which is a red herring all around and you should stop pretending that it is. It is about deliberate policy choices *under cover* of the tea budget, which enables them to pretend that there is some insuperable barrier to alternative policy choices, silencing public dissent to the choices they’re actively making.

I myself am skeptical of narrow degrees because I think their recipients are too easily rendered effectively “degree-less” if they fail to land a narrowly defined “job,” but I accept that not everyone is going to agree not least of all students themselves. Therefore, my solution is that community college degrees should all have a healthy gen-ed core with a strong productive literacy curriculum and that the very narrow trade credentials generally peddled by the for-profits and on-line education should not become the prevailing model because they an all too likely rip-off.

Meanwhile, you simply can’t do clearly useful and important things like nursing, other health, criminal justice, or small business education and job/internship placement on-line or without strong community ties. Period. Students with such certification are at a permanent disadvantage, while saddled with the same debt.
manoflamancha

I have taught in two of the top six so-called leader countries, and I am quite surprised they ranked so high. There was no such thing in my time there as an Associate’s degree, so I can not possibly ascertain how such data was collected in the first instance. This leads me to question the validity of all such international comparisons. The only remotely valid way to make such a comparison is to institute an International Validation Test for all graduates in each field in their own language, shove this into a giant computer, and grind out the comparisons. Otherwise, it is all anecdotal story telling, and insufficient as a basis for instigating another space-type race for supremacy. In short, it is a waste of time and money to enjoin such a competition.

For future comparison purposes, a smaller pool for testing would be prophetic, namely, test the IQ of all recent science and engineering graduates. Now, that would reveal something to sink your teeth into!
drgarysgoodman

There should be more millionaires in America. To that end, I hereby order the Federal Reserve to expand the money supply, so we can officially declare every citizen to be a financial success. We will refer to this program as The American Millionaire Initiative.
hank_devereaux_jr

“Second, it presupposes that formal higher education is the single biggest factor in professional and social success. That’s just not true: my plumber, my electrician, and any contractor I’ve ever hired make more money than I do as an associate professor of English at Ohio State; were I more vain I’m sure I could find a hair stylist who would also fit into that category of high earners.”

This isn’t proof that higher education is not a vital (or even the most important factor) influencing a person’s future income.

Comparing one of the least well-paid disciplines in higher ed to some of the highest paid occupations that don’t require a college degree isn’t valid.

You could compare tenured English Professors to the people who work in the aisles at Wal-Mart or Lowes, the people who prepare fast food, or work as hotel maids, etc. (But, that wouldn’t prove anything either.)

Or you could compare tenured professors in accounting, finance, engineering, law, and economics to electricians, plumbers and contractors. (But, that wouldn’t prove anything either.)

Or — you could run a regression using national data to calculate how higher education affects salary controlling for things like college major, occupation, age, etc. That would be data that would actually quantify the effect of higher education on salary.
old nassau’67

“4. Japan, 3. Russia, 2. South Korea, and 1. Canada.”
According to the Vancouver Sun: “roughly 250,000 arrivals (immigrants) a year, the vast majority from Asia. (Vancouver Sun)”
According to the Population Reference Bureau, USA immigration, 2009, 1,130,818.
I didn’t even bother with 4,3, and 2: Everyone knows that Japan, Russia, and South Korea welcome all immigrants. Not.
Fat_Man

http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/262183/reynoldss-law-and-college-decadence-david-french

Reynolds’s Law, succinctly stated, is: “Subsidizing the markers of status doesn’t produce the character traits that result in that status; it undermines them.” In other words:

“The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”

When you believe, simplistically, that college somehow equals success, then vacuuming more people into college just makes sense. Yet you’re vacuuming in real people, not stimulus-response lab rats. And many of these real people are quite unprepared for traditional workloads, unused to academic discipline, and — worst of all — almost completely uninterested in the pursuit of knowledge. So you dumb down standards to keep them in, ramp up their free time, and voila, you end up with testimonials like a parent told me about her child in a freshman dorm at a certain unnamed SEC school (hint: Roll Tide!): “She sometimes dodges puddles of vomit on her way to the bathroom and about half the nights can’t even stay in her own room because her roommate is entertaining any one of her various hook-ups.”

It’s hard to think of a better way to undermine values than pack thousands of young people in a small geographic area, place no meaningful study or work demands on their lives, teach them that traditional values imprison them, and then provide oceans of easy credit or taxpayer-provided grants. Laissez les bon temps rouler!
voltaire75

Huh??
Prof_truthteller

And it seems many researchers have already done this and have proven many times that higher education does correlate with higher salaries. Here’s but one source: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77
pamelatodoroff

As community colleges continue to hire part-timers rather than replacing retiring full-timers, the quality of academic instruction and the productivity of the remaining full-timers are impacted. There are dozens of adjuncts at my community college who would willingly jump into the committee work and teach the 5/5 load (though full-time English faculty here are 4/5 because of all those essays) on a full-time basis, if given the chance. I think increasing the number of full-time positions would also increase everyone’s productivity.
mbelvadi

It would be a step up if high schools actually were effective “content delivery providers”. In the last couple of generations, it seems they are more “esteem delivery providers” and have given up on delivering much actual content, especially in the area of writing skills.
hank_devereaux_jr

Tomorrow I will be teaching about the Industrial Revolution in my summer school class.

During the Industrial Revolution hundreds of thousands of workers labored in terrible working conditions in coal mines, garment factories, steel mills, etc. They worked 6 days/week, with work days lasting anywhere from 10-16 hours. Typically there was little or no safety equipment, ventilation, or adequate toilet facilities. Workers lacked health insurance benefits, paid sick leave, and disability insurance. They could be fired any time, for any reason, or no reason at all — and pay was low. Firms were able to exploit workers because there were steady and substantial annual increases in the size of the workforce due to huge waves of immigration.

I don’t think these workers were at all to blame for their circumstances.

Whether they work in sweat shops or on college campuses — sometimes workers aren’t in a strong bargaining position. Low wage workers are particularly vulnerable because they typically don’t have the cushion of savings that is needed to relocate to a place where wages are higher — or to retrain for another field.

Like minimum wage workers, adjunct faculty are not a monolithic group. Some are just looking for a little spending money or enjoy teaching a class on occasion. Others rely on their adjunct teaching salary as their sole source of income. What adjunct, working full-time, wouldn’t accept better pay and benefits — if they were offered?

It isn’t the adjuncts who are to “blame” — it’s the colleges and universities that buy into a system that exploits labor (and the graduate departments that encourage the oversupply that makes continued exploitation possible).
fly_on_the_wall

Most of us who are adjuncts do indeed love teaching and do it well; maybe a few of us even do it brilliantly. All of us who do take enormous satisfaction and pride in that and the remarkable relationships with students that grow from teaching. One could also say the same of certain tenured faculty. There is an ocean of difference between our two sets of circumstances. It also sounds as if you work in relatively good conditions. I work in two distinctly different environments–one very good, and one not very good at all due to an abusive and incompetent academic administration. There are many adjuncts who only have the latter, and have no means to improve it and cannot choose to not work in such conditions. It also sounds as if you are fairly new to being an adjunct–a decade or so on the hamster wheel of poor pay and no raises, poor conditions, repetitive courses with no chance of change or development might begin to grate. The problem with your idealism is that it misses the point and plays into the hands of those who need a justification for continued exploitation. You do a disservice to the majority of us who do not have the luxury of being naive.
gzerovnik

I’d like to add that if the 4-year schools would pay a more equitable wage, it would put enormous pressure on the for-profit degree mills who get away with paying as little as they do, as such wages are “competitive” when compared to those of the non-profits and public sector schools. What ever would their shareholders say, if their profits went down due to an increase in adjunct wages?
muleprof

Overworked? Hm. Try teaching that one less class and instead serving on five committee, advising graduate students, and trying desperately to find the 20 hours/week needed to do quality research. But underpaid? YES, you’re underpaid, and underappreciated, and without possibilities for advancement or benefits, and all of that. So *leave.* Stop being the labor force that administrators rely on to keep from opening up tenure-track lines for people like, well, *you.* I am continually astonished by adjuncts: It’s a situation akin to renting a rattrap apartment, or living with an abusive boyfriend–you don’t own it, you’re not married, so why not walk away? The non-academic work world really is NOT that foreign. And one has to be deluded to enter grad school these days thinking that there is any guaranteed academic job at the end of it. You take your chances. Beyond acknowledging that fact, I wonder what serious “preparation” for the non-academic work world faculty could give. (But it’s really NOT that foreign out there…) Of course a job search isn’t easy, but every year, thousands and thousands of undergraduates take their academic degrees and go out into the world and begin to turn their skills into (lucrative, meaningful, *appreciated*) careers. When their job is bad, they leave and find another–that’s how one builds a career. Why should graduate students be any different? And yet there are all these too-smart people hanging on as adjuncts, making less than the custodians and hoping “the institution” will stop abusing them. In what situation in life or history has that *ever* worked?
fly_on_the_wall

Full time faculty are indeed often very overworked. You have my sympathies. But of adjuncts, you presume a great deal, and you really sound quite pampered in that you haven’t experienced “the world” that we occupy. The possibility of leaving as a realistic goal really depends on a lot of factors that may be out of one’s control. Whether it’s “foreign” in the “other” world or not may not be a matter of one’s own perception or willingness to bang down doors and try other things. In a job market such as this one, it might be a matter of those in a position to hire, not those seeking a job. The comparison to the industrial revolution is very apt.
muleprof

Indeed the Industrial Revolution may well be an apt analogy–and how did change come about then? Not by the workers wishing that industry would treat them better but by strikes, organized labor, etc. How did serfs (to which it seems hsigur might be closer to comparing adjuncts, in the sense that they are unable to leave) get a better life? Not by wishing the landed gentry treated them better but by being able to sell their suddenly in-demand services to a higher bidder. (I am not recommending the Black Death, but as long as adjuncts continue to flood this one market, of course the institutions will treat them as expendable.) As for the ad hominem comment that I must be too pampered to know the world, the *reason* I believe that adjuncts must be in something like an abusive relationship is because I *have* worked, for over a dozen years, outside academia, and so I do, in fact, know what the non-academic workplace can be like–a good-and-bad but overall decent and meaningful place to work normal hours, with benefits and salary, where your degree is impressive rather than a marker of wasted time. Is this every job? *Of course not.* And it’s probably not the first job (it wasn’t mine). But my point remains that all the other college graduates go out, find something, find something else, etc., etc., building toward better situations, while adjuncts continue to stay and be abused. And there is no rational reason to stay in such an exploitative, self-denigrating situation hoping that the abuser (the institution) will see your hard work and dedication, and change itself. (It won’t.) It is easy to say, gosh in this economy…but you have advanced degrees, training, skills, experiences, and the luxury of having a job while you look for the new job. Until adjuncts recognize their own value, use their mobility to their advantage, and stop accepting these working conditions as somehow “the only job out there,” nothing will change.
fly_on_the_wall

Wow. Naive.
big_giant_head

…but how, exactly, is it wrong?
anonytrans

“I am continually astonished by adjuncts: It’s a situation akin to
renting a rattrap apartment, or living with an abusive boyfriend–you
don’t own it, you’re not married, so why not walk away?”

What a great analogy. Of course, we all know no one lives in an apartment they don’t like because they can’t afford to move, and certainly no one stays in a relationship with someone who abuses them for any reason. If they don’t manage to get out of a bad situation, clearly its their own fault. Better to just make the leap and assume everything will work out – I mean, homelessness and violent stalking aren’t *that* bad… plus if the new situation doesn’t work out, they can just walk away from the cardboard box they’re living in or kids they can’t afford to support.

Great advice – it really is that simple!
bigghostdini_tha_don

There are a lot of grouchy old haters on the discussion forum… funny that they all probably advocate socialism in real life but behind the anonymity of the Internet they tell exploited workers to suffer-in-silence or quit.
anpadh

Muleprof is disingenuous. The issue, really, is not whether adjuncts (or anyone else) has other options. The issue is the treatment of anyone who, at any moment, for any reason, IS currently an adjunct. Whether you’ve been an adjunct for one semester or one decade is irrelevant. Even in the case of the abusive partner and the bad apartment, the issue is not whether you can swap one (partner or apartment) for another one.

Muleprof is right when he says that the system is not going to change JUST because people complain about it. That is, however, a half-truth. Complaints are the harbinger of change. It is impossible to overthrow an entire system overnight. What would happen if all of the adjuncts magically went off the market? Nothing. The full-timers would get a greater load. Those adjuncts who found alternative jobs would be flooding the job-market in those sectors. Teachers can only apply in certain market-sectors. The range is not infinite.

What adjuncts need to do is to unionize so they can get fair (and rational) pay, along with benefits. Quitting their jobs will only take them from one unsatisfactory situation to another. Another option (or an additional one) is to end tenure. Let the full-timers compete for their jobs each semester as the adjuncts do, with the difference that they would stand to lose their full-time status and salary on a semester-to-semester basis. Not all adjuncts are part-timers. There are several Temporary Full-Time teachers — adjuncts who are given full-time status for a few months. Why not make ALL full-time teachers Temporary Full-Time? That would give Muleprof a taste of his/her own medicine — one that he/she probably won’t like at all!
wilkenslibrary

Even if you are single, living on $20K/year, probably with no benefits, is impossible in most parts of the country. If you have other sources of income and are teaching as a hobby, you should still be supportive of your colleagues who are struggling to make ends meet in the career that they have trained for for years and years.

Betsy Smith/Adjunct Professor of ESL/Cape Cod Community College
awegweiser

Final line says it all. Love what you are doing? Got plenty to live on? Not abused by your superiors in any way? Don’t have to travel 100 + miles a day in a car you can’t afford to replace or even fix? Son, you have the World by the cojones.
Been there, done that for a while. Then I got tenure and promotion. That was when the State (Hint: Commonwealth) which paid me for several decades was run by sane Governors, Senators and Representatives.
wilkenslibrary

When I started teaching at my current institution in January 2000, there were over 90 full-time faculty. Now there are fewer than 70. Contingent faculty have been hired, on the cheap, to fill those slots. Nationwide we comprise roughly 75% of the faculty and teach more that 50% of the courses. We are not “adjunct.” We are central to the teaching mission of higher ed. But our positions are contingent on funding and enrollment, so that’s the term that I prefer to use to describe our situation. My favorite is the Mexican term for our plight–we are “precarios,” but if I called myself “Precarious Professor of ESL,” nobody would know what I was talking about.

Betsy Smith/Adjunct Professor of ESL/Cape Cod Community College
missoularedhead

naive, or spot on?
missoularedhead

I live in an area with almost 20% unemployment. I adjunct (it pays better than most jobs around here), and I have applied for I don’t know how many jobs, including fast food joints, bars, retail stores, heck, even Wal Mart. And nothing. So yeah, I live on my adjunct salary and while I may complain to certain people, I’m not certain I want to take up the fight. I’m too worried about how to pay rent.
fly_on_the_wall

Naive because he makes a grand conclusion regarding a broad situation on the basis of a sample of one–himself, no less–which means he has no idea of what he’s talking about. Naive is too generous a term, but I was trying to be diplomatic.
http://gxgraham.wordpress.com/ Greg Graham

Nothing personal (I’m with you in this thing) but your dept sounds atrocious. The writing dept at my school (which is a middle rung state university) also has mostly adjuncts teaching first-year writing – and there are some disparities similar to yours – but the teaching done, the pedagogy used, and the outcomes sought are fairly uniform. This is due to a Comp director who stays on top of things, does training every semester, keeps using the good ones, and doesn’t renew the poor ones.

A big plus is also that we have a Masters writing program, which serves (in part) as a training center for our pedagogy. I imagine that a school without a graduate program would be greatly handicapped in this regard. For instance, we have several tenure track profs, probably ten other full time professors or instructors, and then 15 – 20 adjuncts. That’s a much more balanced ratio than your dept. I’m honestly astounded by yours.
anonytrans

I’m not saying anything about me (I’m not an adjunct). What I am saying is that the analogy was both poor and offensive.
dpn33

This is analogous to saying to a person who has trained to be a physician and can’t find work that they want that they should just go find something else outside of medicine. What’s the big deal? Surely those skills are transferable to other jobs. Of course for, MDs this scenario is not likely to happen, but for PhDs, it happens all the time. These folks have trained to be researchers/faculty members and you’re suggesting that they just walk away from that dream and life goal and find something else. And you BLAME them for not doing so. Wow.

boggles my mind.

And likely you, Muleprof, or at least many of your colleagues, are part of the problem — willingly taking in new grad students (because, after all, you need them to help get your research and teaching done and to justify your salary) who will graduate with little to no possibility of ever finding work like yours.

Do you see ANY problem with the system?
dpn33

No, no, no. No one is saying that adjuncts are unemployable outside of academe. They are saying that this is the work they love, are best suited and trained for and are being seduced into doing in hopes of getting a better position. You just don’t get it, I guess. People stay because it’s the type of work they really want to do. And because administrators know that there are people out there like that, who love the work and are committed to communicating what they know to others, deans and department chairs take advantage of these “contingent” workers in order to manage what, admittedly, is a very difficult financial environment. Which is why I’m very glad that my institution has a union for adjuncts. I’m also glad that I don’t have to rely on teaching for my living. But most adjuncts don’t have these luxuries.
adjunctcarol

In our department: 2 FT/TT and 4 adjuncts who teach one class shy of FT. Add in overloads and we consistently teach enough sections for 6 FT/TT. Isn’t it nice to have adjuncts that are good enough for TT, dependable, professional, provide other services for the students and college for free, and train each other since they are stuck in offices together but get paid less and hired by the quarter? Our FT are supportive overall!
hank_devereaux_jr

Research on adjuncts is being done by The New Faculty Majority. See: http://www.newfacultymajority.info/national/

The exploitation of workers that was rampant during the Industrial Revolution was never halted — but reduced through unionization.

The more dependent a university grows on adjunct faculty to teach courses — the more bargaining power a *unionized* adjunct faculty work force will have.
adjunctcarol

So dump the abusive spouses, and simply get on with life? What about the children or the next partners? Let the manipulative ones in power perpetuate the cycle by using new unsuspecting partners? It is almost negligent to the next bunch of adjuncts for current adjuncts to abandon and not fight. They want us to get tired and quit. If one can tough it out, enjoy the teaching and have basic necessities HANG IN THERE!

This situation CAN change and it WILL. But only if those who understand stick up for themselves and others. We may have casualties along the way. Isaac I hope you are doing well.
marsings

What do you mean by “adjuncts need to take some responsibility for our situation’? I work adjunct jobs because that’s what I can get. If I had the choice and could get a full time position, I certainly would!! I’ve been teaching for 30 years, have multiple degrees, and still can’t land a full time position. As long as institutions continue to cut back on full time positions and save money by hiring “part time” faculty (who receive less pay, less in benefits, and have no say in what goes on in a department and serve at the whim of their full time supervisors), education and teachers suffer.
james924s

I am hearing a lot of complaining from people so I think I
will throw my two cents in. I am 8 months from my PhD. In my field, and nobody
is hiring. I have in excess of $100,000.00 invested in my education and nobody
is hiring. I understand that education is expensive and with government reductions
something has to give and if being a teacher doesn’t pay I am free to go
somewhere else and work. My point is this: we have allowed the United States to
become a welfare state and the state had a choice between spending what
resources it had on education or the welfare state, guess who won out? We are
cutting back in schools and in public safety (California is turning 37,000
inmates loose before their sentences are up) and we are going to pay the price
for not being able to say “no” to the handouts. The typical felon commits 21 felonies
before he s caught, and California inmates have a 54% recidivism rate within
the first year. Do the numbers (37000 x .54 x 21=) they are turning loose
419,580 felonies, just in this year alone. How much are those felonies the
recapturing and the resentencing of those going to cost the people of
California? California is not alone virtually every state is getting ready to
release people they know they should not be releasing, and many will be sued by
victims, and we will pay for that as well.

I use California as an example because it is the most
obvious but it is true for everywhere in the country. Taxpayers in California
and elsewhere are not and were not willing to be used like an ATM machine
forever, nor should they be. California (and other states too) used to pass a
budget for more money than they were going to take in for revenues and then raise
tax rates. It was inevitable that the taxpayers at some point were going to say
“That’s enough”, and they did. When given a choice between Education and Public
Safety on one side and the handouts on the other side, they chose the hand outs.
Even if they had agreed at some point we would still be here because at some
point they would have run out of money.

It is embarrassing because we are in academia and many of us
are in finance, government, management and public safety and yet supported the
growth of the welfare state to the unsustainable level it is now. We fed the
dog that is now biting us, and we should have seen this inevitable end coming. The
things that are important that government does, like Education, like Public Safety
have all been put on hold and we are all paying the price for the massive welfare
state now.

The academic community must be the one’s that tell our students
of the benefit of work. If things are ever going to improve we need to tell our
students about the importance of getting off welfare. We also need to advocate
the reduction and eventual orderly elimination of welfare.
rabbitquest

For many special people, the academic environment is their choice, and their life’s work. I fell from grace, landing in a supporting role, other than teaching. I feel like that shakespeare movie , where the two men, who had a short role in the play were under the stage, while the play was going on around them. i would see the brilliant and fervent lectures, as I walked by the classrooms. I heard the stories of people who didn’t ‘make tenure’, and had to move on, or will be moving on. I am friends with a retired gentleman who does a lion’s share of front line teaching, constantly grading papers, or meeting with students to give them extra help. It is kind of embarassing to see some of the other ‘full timers’, who actually hide out from their offices, to avoid having to deal with the burden.

Strangely, as the people actually start believing the mantra that has been drummed into us, how ‘staying in school’ is the best choice, we get to see our economics class in action, as supply and demand adjusts itself downwards on the price curve.
guilt

Let us review history and the construction of the labor
market, we are educated and still suffer from oppression? The labor market is
inherently unequal since the employer is paid for the labor of the employee. It
is the employer who decides what the employ receives as compensation. Man up
and do your homework if you want change. Reed (unfair labor
market practices) Reinhold
Fahlbeck, 1994,The Demise of Collective Bargaining in the USA: Reflections on
the Un-American Character of American Labor Law, The Regents of the University
of California on behalf of Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, (15
Berkeley J. Emp. & Lab. L. 307) or my work in progress at UTPA “Labor Degradation in Hidalgo County,
Texas, 1920-1970s”

To the degree for which a person has a vested interest to
the capitalist social structure is the variant for which to view the fallowing
comment. “The web site http://www.forbs.com offers an execution list for all poor
people who seek economic revolution. Die in an oligarchy or live in a
democracy!” Now, any man will kill another man who tries to take his
wealth. The conundrum is this holds true for two poor people, two middle class
people and two affluent people, hence the reason for war, with the exception of
the facade for which we call democracy. These affluent people have the ability
to put their entire power associated to wealth behind such an endeavor as
halting any violent revolution.

In a Democracy we reword the statement to read “The web site above offers
a list of all the affluent people to boycott in an economic revolution. Live a
union member or live in economic slavery!” To an economist the statement
can be reworded to state “The web site above offers a list of all the
affluent people for which poor people can admire. God bless America–Democracy!”

I know, I know, in the 40s the label of socialist would have been applied to
the first statement; in the 50s the label of communist would have been applied
to the second statement. In the third statement the notion of equality is based
on power, the power to label any person or group that threatens redistribution
of wealth either through peaceful or violent means as a terrorist.

Thus I choose to live in the truth, we live in a oligarchy disguised as a
democracy. As long as the masses contemplate acceptance to the vested interests
with in the lie, economic redistribution will not come without equal access to
education, of which will not appear till the middle class starts to see the
poor as equal in wealth. Affluent people have sucked the poor dry and are now
working on the middle class or as waren buffet says “We are in a war here
and you (poor people) just do not know it yet!” You can call me radical
but not suicidal for I will not just lie down or bend r! How will you stand up
and fight, with violence or none violent protest? Just as I feel there is
nothing wrong with spreading the wealth, there is nothing wrong with spreading
the truth through education.

Disclaimer: this is not intended to advocate or promote in
any kind, conflict or violence. Eddie A.
kaakela

I find it interesting that for you, muleprof, teaching is just a job,
and not a calling. I have wanted to be a teacher ever since I first
thought about what I wanted to be “when I grew up.” Unfortunately, I
have encountered so many full timers just like you. Where is your
passion? The long term adjuncts I know, and that includes this writer,
love to teach. I’m not afraid of employment outside of teaching, and I
have had some very interesting and well paid jobs on the”outside,” but I
love to teach. I also know a lot in my field of history. What a shame
to not use all that knowledge and all that very specific training in
instructional delivery!
I agree that it would be better for full timers and part timers to hold
hands and sing kumbaya, but the superior air that so many full timers
breathe seems to inhibit their compassion for the peons who fund their
perks. In the community college system where I work, I have NEVER met a
full timer who works harder than I do. And I accept that I am putting up
with a very unjust situation, because in the big picture, it is more
satisfying to me to do something I love, than to work at a less
meaningful job for better pay and benefits. I am in a position where I can
make this kind of decision without ramifications for another or a
dependent.
But maybe muleprof is right–maybe we adjuncts all need to walk off the
job, and see how the full timers fumble when there is no one to take the
leftovers. I wish profs like muleprof would find another “job,” and let
the people with passion for teaching have their spot!
wendyxqm

We are a corporate welfare state. On a national level, family and children welfare is about 2% of the budget, it’s laughable to even get upset about it. Yet the amount we spend on corporate welfare is mind-boggling: it is approximately 10 times what we spend on social welfare. Further, all of us who own homes are receiving welfare in tax credits and write-offs; it’s still welfare, it just sounds more legit.

We spend billions on prisons because it is a legal form a slavery (read the 14th amendment carefully) and we can exploit people as cheap labor. This is why the stock for Corrections Corporation of America goes up every time a 3 strikes law is passed. Our prisons are filled with people receiving 25-to-life sentences for selling $20 worth of weed building appliances for Sears and everyone else. Go read up on the products you can buy from Unicor-the federal prison industries. This is nothing but corporate greed and profit and we are creating laws to bring in more cheap labor.

In California, a single parent with one child receives a welfare check of less than $565 a month. So trust me, no one is running around receiving “handouts” like that voluntarily. 83% of women on welfare are victims of domestic violence with 65% actively experiencing abuse. Those who try to go back to school are in the most dangerous stage of being abused and killed (I have had my students stalked, beat up, homework ripped up, and killed by being pushed out the car, just because they were going back to school so they could leave their abuser). In California, less than 1% of parents on welfare who are experiencing abuse receive a domestic violence waiver so they can get help. If California gave out more waivers, we wouldn’t being facing $150,000,000 in penalties from the federal government.

Your logic that we are in crisis due to handouts is seriously flawed. I hope the next 8 months of your PhD teaches you something.
justanotherccadjunct

Our 10- year-old adjunct local just surveyed our membership — around 40% of those who responded to our survey have been teaching on a PT basis at our institution for 14+ years.

I’d say that pretty much undermines the argument that admin “needs” a flexible laborforce to respond to the ebbs and flows of enrollment. After 14+ years of continuously employing the same individuals it’s time for admin to admit they are not using adjuncts on an adjunct basis.

But, I suppose, why would they buy the cow when they can get the milk for free?
mcalping

First: Muleprof, you are a terrible writer. No tenured prof at any university or community college should write as poorly as you do. Semi-literate instructors in academe provide poor models for undergrads and are part of the reason why so many college graduates have embarrassingly poor reading and writing skills today.

Second: The simple & fair solution to to inequitable college instructor employment would be for each institution to develop a transparent formula based on continuous observation of classroom instruction, years of education, years of experience, years of service, research & publication contributions, service on committees, and so forth to figure an hourly rate for each instructor. Then pay everyone by the hour, with benefits accruing according to hours of service put in over the semester and the years. Valuable instructors who bring in grant money, have lots of publications, stay for years and provide continuity, or are extremely productive in other ways could bargain for longer contracts, more admin and research support, higher hourly rates of pay, sabbaticals, and the like. People who just want an interesting quarter-time job could be paid for that level of commitment This makes for a more straightforward, level, and competitive playing field. With the competition out in the open, we would see who is earning his or her pay and how.
cdwickstrom

I can’t agree more. I recently went through the initial phases of the job application process at a MAJOR for profit, which charges students $1500 per 3 semester hour class. I got far enough to have them forward their salary schedule for classes. I was absolutely amazed to find that they had a starting salary of $900 per 3 semester hour class, with a top ( after 10 years of teaching) of $1300 per class. The school policy was that the class would not be taught unless at least 10 students enrolled. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to figure that this amounts to $9000 per annum for a full-time equivalent load at a community college (5 classes per semester, for two semesters, not including summer work). If this was the sole source of your salary, you would be eligible for full welfare support, food stamps, cash aid, Section 8 housing, and medicaid. Best case, the instructor in a ten student class receives 8.67% of the revenue from the class. Starting adjunct gets 6%. In a class of 15 students, the numbers become obscene. FOR PROFIT, indeed!
neudy

If you feel “stuck in a rut”, as an adjunct, then think about this for a moment.

Most of the comments I’ve read talk about teaching (X) amount of classes and getting paid (Y) for it, all the while a full time professor gets more and has better benefits. If this is you (point), then lets change that aspect.

Adjuncts fill a need for administrators. Why? Because funding is decreasing (public) and administration can’t hire more full time faculty members. Therefore, stop trying to wait for a “full time” opportunity opens up for you – go find out what the administration needs? What does the Dean need? What does the Provost need? President, Chancellor, etc? They have goals and needs and if you can do something for them then they will be glad to help you as well. Keep doing this and they’ll give you something full time. It might not always be as a professor, but it will get your foot in the door. Then, you can work your way into whatever spot you want.

I’ve done this a number of times and it always works for me. No matter what institution I’m at, I look for a way to shine.

Give it a try.
adjunctcarol

This might work in certain places. But if you want to teach… I spent my time in combat with a semi-crazy President (e.g. who hit on my exchange student, create with basic state laws, demeaned adjuncts) and trying to get tenured faculty to stick up for themselves. Why should an adjunct do this? I was in the right place at the right time. I learned all about laws and the academic world beyond my school. We now have a new president who is a rational professional. But me? I am still sort-of labeled a “rabble-rouser.” Just a defender of the less powerful.
missoularedhead

You’d think 8 years of bar/restaurant experience, including management, all thru grad school would count as the ‘right skill set’!
solidagojuncea

Federal mining laws will probably allow Mr. Loomis to lease mineral rights under the sculpture and wipe it out in his search for more coal.
dmoser5

FULL DISCLOSURE (Sort of . . .) — I have a close affiliation with Pronghorn University (I say that tongue-in-cheek because there are more pronghorn antelopes in the area than students, total. Yes, we see them in town on the way to the local Big Box Store).

First up, I have serious concerns about the leap of faith that is being made to connect the mountain pine bark beetle infestation that is inexorably devastating the surrounding forests here with the coal industry that admittedly does provide much to the economy of the state. Quite simply, either Chris Drury has been misquoted or misinformed (he could have come to my office; we spent the last year helping with a project by one of the University’s Bristol Scholar’s—he did a photo-reportage, with audio interviews, of the people bearing the impact of the pine beetle infestation and nary a lump of coal insight).
Second, I am deeply saddened to see the rush to judgement on the part of the Wyoming Mining Association in their condemnation of this project. @chronicle-3d4cf264a045538cf252e719e74b68f5:disqus has nailed it quite well in saying that this is an opportunity for debate and education, all the way around (especially if I am right about #1 above!).This campus desperately needs such opportunities for open debate; we have learned nothing from the debacle here last year if we do not take this one.

Or perhaps Peter Garrett was right after all and “And nothing’s as precious, as a hole in the ground . . .”
thedoctorisin

The problem I see here is that the sculpture is permanent and therefore the anti-mining statement will endure for generations. Even if this could be turned into a “learning moment,” the Wyoming Mining Association can make its defense but one time.
lexalexander

I like the idea of constructive debate around the issue and, to the extent that the university community and the taxpayers of Wyoming care what I think, I strongly encourage that debate.

That said, if Mr. Loomis truly understood academic freedom, he wouldn’t have brought up his association’s financial support of the university in raising his objections, and it is disingenuous for anyone to claim otherwise.
thedoctorisin

I don’t buy your premise regarding academic freedom. It does not mean you can ride roughshod over opposing viewpoints. It appears that Chris Drury was made aware of several facts regarding the pine beetle epidemic and chose to ignore them. Academic freedom requires intellectual honesty.
lexalexander

I agree, and I did not intend to imply that Drury was blameless or that his positions should go unchallenged if there is a factual basis for challenging them. I’m simply saying that by bringing financial support into the conversation, Mr. Loomis weakened his own position.
thedoctorisin

Understood.
dank48

Heaven knows I’m not up to speed on this controversy, but the numbers seem odd. “. . . students and faculty members had told
him that the beetles had destroyed more than 100 million acres of forest
in Wyoming and other mountain states. . . .” Okay, “and other mountain states” is an out, but is this accurate, or even credible?

Wyoming itself has a total area of 97,818 square miles. One hundred million acres is 156,250 square miles. Perhaps the beetles really have destroyed mountain-state forest equal in area to 1.6 Wyomings. But could someone point me toward the evidence that “100 million acres” is actually anything more than a SWAG?
icclift

Is there a difference between what is ethical and what is moral? What one considers to be morally wrong may not equate to what is considered ethically wrong. From my understanding Ethical guidelines are imposed by an institution as a set of guidelines that have been agreed upon by a group or organization with which you belong, i.e. a professional organization. Morals being the rules and guidelines that you personally believe based on religious faith or personal value system, many of which are interchangeable and in most circumstances overlap.
The authors state, ” they see newborns as potential persons, rather than actual persons, and so their deaths would be “morally irrelevant.”” Since morality is of a more personal nature and therefore based on the school of thought with which you prescribe, the idea of moral relevance is irrelevant. Unless one considers specifically the morals or ethics of a specific group.
Which means that both the pro-lifers and the article authors can make a ‘moral’ case. Tragically it misses the point, because while both views may be based on reason and logic, the logic may not stem from facts. Any argument can be reasoned logically, but if the premises with which they are argued are false then the argument is false. Policy should be based not on these type of arguments, in my opinion of course, but instead be based on evidence based examinations.
And I agree, read Jonathan Swift.
nybound

“… a roundabout way of saying that if a mother is too poor or too distressed to raise the baby she’s given birth to, then it’s ethically OK for the baby to be killed.”

Or, to take things a step further, why don’t we just euthanize all the poor? They suffer, and they inflict suffering on us by committing crimes and sponging off of society. Why should it matter if poor adults are more ‘self-aware’ than infants? At least the infant has unrealized and unknown potential – let it grow and develop and see if it blossoms into something worthwhile, and if it doesn’t kill it when it reaches an appropriate age. Talk about incentives!

Just to make an academic arguments, of course…
ffidura

It is hard to believe the notion of infanticide was put forward even as an academic exercise in ethics. My God what have we become?
22048164

The fact that this idea was seriously proposed, then defended (!), is very disturbing to me. I will echo ffidura…what have we become? Have we not advanced at all? They talk about handicapped and sick children as if no child like that has ever in history contributed immensely to our society. As if it were a mother’s right to take life away. Our society is sick.
greeneyeshade

Why is anyone surprised? We’ve been on this track since Margaret Sanger set up the slippery slope . Roe v. Wade sped up the process. We’re coming full circle to the sacrificing of children that was characteristic of ancient cultures.
skmarie17

How would a perfectly healthy newborn harm “society?”
And who is to determine this?
This is the most frightening thing I have ever read.
The very notion is both ethically and morally repugnant, and anyone who disagrees has no soul. Oh, sorry – I am giving away my lack of education.
http://nathaniel-campbell.blogspot.com/ Nathaniel M. Campbell

It’s “academic” arguments like this that have so shot liberal education in the foot. Most folks
take one look at this and ask, “Why is public money supporting this ‘research’ when it’s so crazily off the deep end of practical sense and morals?” Their ideas are so obviously nonsensical that it makes people question the very ideal of liberal education. And as a liberal educator, that’s a problem for me. Every time some “researcher” who is so out of touch with reality that he honestly proposes infanticide as a line of the ethical reasoning (and offers no alternative criterion to keep us from killing disabled adults), it gives the good work of academe a bad name.

Furthermore, if their argument hinges on a definition of “person” that involves self-awareness and self-valuation, then the logical conclusion is that only that entity can decide whether or not to die. How does a parent know that their newborn child is not self-aware and self-valued? Conversely, the logical conclusion is that, if a depressed person feels that there is no more value in continuing to live, they are now morally obligated to kill themselves. Entertaining such hypotheticals as logic exercises is one thing; publishing them as valid ethics in a medical journal quite another. If you are going to advocate an ethical position in such a way, you need to be prepared for it to operate in the real world; and this line of reasoning is very clearly not designed to do so.
22048164

The scary thing is, the argument is clearly not nonsensical to some. The Netherlands apparently already condone the killing of ill infants. How much farther do they have to slip before they reach an acceptance of the deaths of ALL inconvenient infants?
boiler

I’m a secular liberal Democrat, and I’ve read the paper, and I have to say that the critics are right — this argument is profoundly repugnant, and it’s hard to come up with any other term than evil to describe people who would write it. They do in fact argue that people should be allowed to kill healthy infants. They do not impose any objective restrictions on this ability, merely an assessment by the parents that raising the child would be a burden they don’t want to bear. They explicitly maintain that this would be the case even if adoption were available, since the existence of a biological child might pose a psychological strain for the birth mother. What meaning does the term “evil” have, if it doesn’t apply to this?

The journal’s defense seems to be that the argument is rationally constructed. That’s a pretty weak response. People have come up with rational arguments in favor of all kinds of things, including slavery, torture, and the extermination of disliked minorities. That doesn’t make these things any less evil, and it doesn’t make their proponents any less reprehensible.
22067030

It is hard to tell from an article about an article, but it sounds like The Modest Proposal lives. Of course, The Modest Proposal was satire…

GLMcColm
eulerian_ta

Don’t like post-birth abortions? Don’t have one, and leave others not sharing your religious beliefs alone. Why do anti-choicers oppose social safety nets while not allowing women to make the choice to end parenthood in the infancy stage? Are you going to take care of all of the unwanted infants out there? I guess your rights begin at conception and end at childhood according to anti-choicers.

[/sarcasm]
http://blog.jonolan.net jonolan

More than one blogger has claimed that Guibilini and Minerva should be exterminated. I was just the most prominent and the only one to provide their pictures and addresses.
quacker

Like the majority of those commenting here, I find the whole idea morally bankrupt and totally repugnant. I reply here to 22048164 only to caution against the implied premise that the value of a life is determined by its contribution to society. All life, even the most physically and mentally challenged, is sacred. It is not our place to judge which lives have value and which lives do not. We have a Supreme Being who is far more capable of fairly rendering that judgment than any of us humans who tend to make such decisions in our own self-interest.
22048164

I agree with you 100%, quacker. That line was primarily a reaction to appallingly low value placed on the lives of seriously ill or handicapped children that apparently already exists as law in some parts of the world. Hence, the sentence that follows that statement. No mother (or father) has the right to take life away.
mamazee

Ideas have consequences. It’s a principle that i emphasize in our homeschool in all our studies of history. The history of the world can be mapped on principles, philosophies, ideas… These men are cowards to promulgate something so hateful (babies not human until… when? six weeks post birth?) – and unscientific. And yes, they should be blamed if some stupid government takes them up on their ridiculous idea (for reference, see the Ontario Canada superintendant of schools saying that he “coparents” all the children in his school district or the New Zealand legislation that makes it permissible for a doctor to sterilize a mentally handicapped child without notifying or getting the permission of his or her parents…)
http://blog.jonolan.net jonolan

Small correction – It’s one man and one woman(!) who put forth this ‘article” endorsing infanticide.
gregschuler

How on earth can these people call themselves ethicists? Where are we going? From unlimited abortion in the womb to newborn infanticide? What’s next: Is it really OK to kill 6 year olds if they become “unduly burdensome.”
wstumper

Bartlett’s attempt to portray the authors as somehow surprised at the reaction to their article is disingenuous at best, or just plain naive. So, somehow that fact that others have “written” about this years earlier is a defense? (Why didn’t Bartlett point out that Giubilini teaches at the ethics school co-founded by Peter Singer?) And the authors are washing their hands of how this was “promulgated across the internet”? (Ok, then explain why Journal of Medical Ethics removed pay wall acce$$ to the article within days, or possible hours, after the firestorm erupted.) Also no mention of an earlier Italian conference in which Giubilini argued there is no moral reason to oppose euthanasia?
tdr75

Way to raise the level of the debate. While the ideas presented in the paper are inhumane and repugnant, your response is on the same level.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000758677935 Emilio Lizardo

The original article has been removed from the journal. Anyone know where a copy can be found?
http://blog.jonolan.net jonolan

What is there to debate and what point is there in “raising the level” of such a foolish debate? Words don’t solve for creatures like Guibilini and Minerva, with the possible exception of credibly threats to their wellbeing.
lairdwilcox

This is an interesting discussion. At which point does an abortion become infanticide? Various abortion advocates give different stages of fetal development as an indicator with radicals claiming that any point up to birth should be the option of the fetus carrier (aka mother).

What is being suggested here is that there’s nothing magical about birth, especially if it represents some inconvenience to the woman. Why not six weeks, or even six months after birth? By letting the fetus carrier decide, taking her own feelings and cimcumstances into consideration, we may be able to wring a little more ”equality” out of a fading equal rights issue.

Having that noisy kid might mess up your social life, or it might have some kind of medical problem, or your new lover might be narcissistic, too, and want all the attention. All those years in college preparing for a career, all that student debt, keeping someone else out so you could have a place, and now you have a responsibility that’s going to take up time that could be spent on thigh reduction programs, lute lessons, social causes, harrassing people for using the wrong light bulbs, and whatever else it takes to be a practically perfect and politically correct person. All kids do is suck up oxygen and need things.

Abortion is an open-ended issue, like it or not. If it happens at all and it remains the prerogative of the woman and the “sperm donor” doesn’t count, why does it matter when it happens? I’ve known “career women” who would have liked to off their teenagers if they could. “That little freak reaminds me of his father!…whoever he is!,” she says, as she dials for the sleep van, a euphemism for the abortion truck complete with cremation facilities and all.. “Perhaps they’ll be happier this way, too!” “I know I will, too, at least for a couple of days.” The teenagers are sobbing are are about to get charged with an anti-pro-choice hate crime if they don’t quiet down.

A post-fetal abortion is the answer. “It just wasn’t right for me after all,” she explains, and what is feminism is it isn’t all about me, me, me? Feminism uber alles!, she mutters dewey eyed and her friends give her hugs of supports while the pro-family fascists gather together nearby in silent prayer. The police are watching them from the street and drones flying overhead in case they do somethig violent or attempt to harass women except, of course, those who are getting aborted.

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