A prominent community-college chief has joined a growing list of campus leaders who are turning down pay increases because of the recession. Michael B. McCall, president of the Kentucky Community and Technical College system, earned $610,670 in total compensation in 2007-8, tops among leaders of 64 community colleges, according to a survey by The Chronicle.
Citing difficult financial times for the 16-college system, Mr. McCall said yesterday that he would “join all our faculty and staff in receiving no salary increase this year and will decline any bonus I am eligible for,” reports The Courier-Journal, in Louisville.
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19 Responses to Leader of Kentucky’s Community-College System Rejects Raise and Bonus
Shalanna Collins - October 3, 2011 at 8:55 pm
The book dedication example (which I thought I came up with about twenty years ago as an example on the old FidoNet WRITING echo) is generally phrased as:
“I dedicate this book to my parents, Hillary Clinton and God.”
I think that’s a lot funnier than the version in this article, especially to people who can’t imagine the Secretary of State getting a midnight visit from a fearsome angel. . . .
outlaw36 - October 4, 2011 at 7:51 am
OM, G
Lucy Ferriss - October 4, 2011 at 9:15 am
It is funny. It’s another example of the non-use of the comma, per the strippers. The example in this post is of the possible confusion arising from the use of the comma.
tanyavallejo - October 4, 2011 at 10:32 am
the beginning of an otherwise beguiling article was marred by the casual elitism of “while most of us were at the beach.” Who’s most of us, scotty? most americans are hammered by unemployment and the attendant miseries, and even teachers don’t spend summers at the beach, unless they want an early case of skin cancer from the sun which has lost its ozone layer. Such frivolous inanities are, well, off-topic and off-putting.
rrhersh - October 4, 2011 at 12:02 pm
Of course these discussions always assume that the reader is some sort of space alien completely lacking cultural context and therefore relying upon niceties of punctuation to determine the text’s meaning. In the real world most of these supposed ambiguities are nothing of the kind when taken in context.
The few times I have had my prose professionally copy edited I have found about a quarter of the changes to be beneficial. A small but significant number made the text worse, typically when discussing technicalities outside the editor’s expertise. The remaining changes, which constitute by far the largest category, were irrelevancies such as worrying about serial commas. I don’t worry about the adiaphora, only fighting the those changes which are harmful. But I can’t help but wonder at the expense and energy devoted to such trivia.
bookwomanca - October 4, 2011 at 12:48 pm
This response is off-topic and off-putting.
Ramone - October 4, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Are you saying that people with low income don’t go to the beach? That IS elitist.
dank48 - October 4, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Caption to an article about a country music performer: “. . . was joined by his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Waylan Jennings.”
butteredtoastcat - October 4, 2011 at 9:15 pm
No, tanyavallejo was saying that people with low income couldn’t afford the beach this year. Neither could a lot of people of middle income.
Academics may be a well shielded bubble of privilege, but the rest of the country is suffering pretty badly. Remember that “one paycheck away from disaster” scenario? Well, it’s here for many people, including those of middle age (who are too old for job recruiters and too young for Social Security) and those in their twenties who can’t get the jobs that have been downsized or sent to Asia. And then there are those of us, who are employed but have been affected by the rising prices of food, gas and other staples. Symptomatic of the falling dollar (courtesy of the Fed and QE1 and 2), these increasing prices are forcing cutbacks for even those middle class families who have steady employment. Cutbacks are on luxury items, vacations, and durable goods like autos and appliances. Meanwhile, a lot of companies are cutting back on raises and bonuses, making the pinch of higher prices worse.
So no, a lot of people didn’t get to the beach for the summer.
jmur9468 - October 5, 2011 at 12:31 am
But it has nothing to do with the point of the article. Seizing on one sentence in what was essentially a light academic piece for polemical purposes is neither fair nor useful.
Carolyn Roosevelt - October 5, 2011 at 9:52 am
Here’s another way using the Oxford comma can alter the effect of a sentence, and in this case, not for the better: Robert Frost did not mean to say “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,” as some recent editions would have it. He wrote, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.”
That is, not /lovely/+/dark/+/deep/, but /lovely/=/dark and deep/.
(This note is not original to me. It comes from a review of a Frost collection, fifteen or twenty years ago, but whether it was in Harper’s, the Atlantic, or the New Yorker, I cannot now say.)
angela marin - October 6, 2011 at 12:05 am
I’ve always been a fan of the Oxford comma. Feels strange not using it.
lynwilso - October 6, 2011 at 9:52 am
Or, if the economy continues its downward slide for lower and middle income:
“Cutbacks are on luxury items, vacations and durable goods like autos and appliances.”
Daniel Montero - October 6, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Just came across this sentence and thought of your post. From Buffalotarrak.
Breakfasts
were bacon or ham and eggs, and always there was homemade bread.
:)
Ramone - October 7, 2011 at 4:49 pm
A. Do I need to actually explain the concept of sarcasm to you? B. Many beaches are free. B. The whole second paragraph of your little diatribe is so self serving and off topic it’s HIGH-larious. I don’t know any “Academics” who are “shielded” from reality–ahem–quite the contrary.
Tulletilsynet - October 9, 2011 at 11:26 pm
Just to be a prescriptive jerk and for no other reason (because there is approaching a 100% probability that this will be ignored), I want to urge that “to advocate” is a transitive verb, and the noun “(an) advocate” governs the preposition “of” rather than “for,” and that the opposite of “an advocate of” something is “an opponent of” that same thing. As the post above shows clearly, as soon as you allow “advocating for,” you will surely begin to see the barbarism “advocating against,” as in “More style guides advocate for than against the comma,” above. As soon as you let “to advocate” slip into intransitive gear, you’re bound down this horrible slippery slope. Civilization is over, it’s all Goths and Visigoths. Just say no.
Lucy Ferriss - October 10, 2011 at 8:34 am
How interesting! And you are RIGHT. The sentence should read “More style guides advocate than oppose the comma.” Wow. A subject for a post in the near future. Thank you.
lazybones - November 6, 2011 at 9:36 pm
I am an interested Briton with no English or linguistic qualification, who was always taught not to use a comma before the final ‘and’ in a list. I have never heard the name ‘Oxford comma’ used to describe the use of such a comma, and have always understood that to be a US-English convention.
Even setting aside my knowledge of the world and how it works, I have no problem reading the sentences that Lucy finds risible since I do not interpret the lack of a final comma as indicating that the final two items are paired; for me, the ‘and’ does all the separating that is needed.
Had the person who sent the invites meant that the strippers were JFK and Stalin, I would expect a colon to introduce them. Similarly, a colon after ‘Mandela’ would make his great age clear, while without it there is no ambiguity for me. Likewise the book dedication, in either version.
The roses are only a problem if you’re used to a final comma; if you are not, then the violinist is not (necessarily) in the bathroom. To pinpoint him there I would write ’3,500 members, a full choir, and a violinist and long-stemmed roses in the bathroom’.
I find the breakfast menu a very strange example. I wonder whether, for Lucy, the toast must always be on a separate plate. If that is so, and Lucy needs it to be made clear, then write ‘with a side-order of toast’ or ‘with toast on the side’. But if the three items are on the same plate then why do the bacon and eggs have to ‘belong together’? Why shouldn’t the eggs be on the toast to catch the dripping yolk, with the bacon alongside? That is how I have my breakfast, and I would describe it with just one final ‘and’. Otherwise, to show that the bacon and eggs are an item I would punctuate the list ‘coffee, bacon and eggs, and toast’, the ‘rule’ as I learnt it being ‘no comma before the ‘and’ that introduces the final item in a list unless the penultimate item is a pair that includes an ‘and”. The semi-colon is, of course, always available for complicated lists containing comma-separated groups.
Whichever convention a writer follows, misunderstandings should not arise if readers share the convention. When conventions differ, there can be misunderstandings both ways, as the article shows.
Jay - January 24, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Source for credit: http://aeferg.tumblr.com/post/10290286196/grammar-is-important-kids-credit-for-original