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Ohio State U. May Join State Prisons in Food-Buying Deal

March 26, 2011, 4:34 pm

Ohio State University and the state’s corrections department are putting together a proposal to save money by cooperating on food purchases, the Associated Press reports. An Ohio State representative said the university couldn’t calculate its potential savings until the proposal is complete, but a spokesman for the prison system said buying in bulk and changing prison menus could save $2-million a year. The idea was among many put forth by corrections employees after administrators sought their suggestions for saving money. The wire service reports that the prisons spend about $54-million a year on food, while the university spends about $20-million.

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  • willynilly

    Since Jim Tressel will not be coaching football at Ohio State this year, it might be a good idea to put him in charge of this program. It will give him an important orientation to the “ins and outs” of the state prison system.

  • katisumas

    Does this mean that inmates are going to get better food or that students are goind to get worse food?

  • fallenchemist

    There have been various Supreme Court decisions that firmly establish that State institutions cannot discriminate on the basis of political beliefs when non-political positions are involved.  The reasoning varies on the particulars, but not even the University is trying to use the defense you are suggesting.  They are simply saying they didn’t take her political beliefs into account, which based on the evidence is pretty hard to swallow.

  • bookbinder

    Fallen: I wasn’t suggesting a defense, simply wondering how the law works in such cases. My curiosity was prompted in part by an old, rather humorous case of a lawyer who was not rented an apartment specifically because she was a lawyer, and her subsequent suit was tossed out because it was not illegal to discriminate on the basic of occupation — that recollection left me wondering how narrowly a court might interpret “creed” in the Iowa case. I’m not a lawyer and have no real insights into the workings of these things.

    Consequently, I am also not familiar with Supreme Court cases that establish “that State institutions cannot discriminate on the basis of political beliefs when non-political positions are involved”, (though I am aware that the Supreme Court has found that state employees cannot be fired for political party membership). Just my ignorance; I’ll take your word for it.

    I am, however, pleased to see that Dr. Wood is defending the right of a prospective public school faculty member not to be discriminated against on the basis of political beliefs, since the private institution in which he spend much of his professional career, Boston University, was so often charged with discriminating against faculty on the basis of their political beliefs during the John Silber era, when Dr. Wood was a member of that administration.

  • dank48

     I’m not sure where these purges of liberals are occurring, but in any case, if the pot calls the kettle black, it’s generally because they’re both black.

  • anon1972

    Without actually having seen the CVs of all three candidates, I’m far from comfortable simply proclaiming that “Teresa Wagner was by a substantial margin the best candidate for the position she applied for.”  Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t.  I do not by any means discount the possibility that political bias was at work here.  But your article doesn’t offer any hard evidence of this.  

    As for this: 
    “Wagner told him [about her interview at] Ave Maria School of Law, where she received an offer for a tenure-track law school teaching position.  Associate Dean Carlson suggested to Wagner that she conceal this fact during the interview process because Ave Maria is viewed as a conservative school.”
    –there is absolutely no doubt that Ms. Wagner’s politics were among the qualifications that worked IN HER FAVOR at Ave Maria, which is a law school whose express mission is (quoting from their Mission Statement) to provide “an outstanding legal education in fidelity to the Catholic Faith as expressed through Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the teaching authority of the Church.” Given the legal requirement of separation of church and state, I can hardly consider it inappropriate that an associate dean at a state school would warn a candidate that disclosing this affiliation might not be to her advantage. Further: apparently it is totally fine for Ave Maria School of Law to discriminate on the basis of both politics and religion when hiring their law faculty. Why then is it so pearl-clutchingly shocking to suggest that a strong ideological tendency, one that is actually at odds with current law (last I checked, the law of the land was that abortion is legal) might be a factor weighing against a candidate for a position at another institution?

  • quacker

    Almost every public higher education institution professes a dedication to diversity in its students, faculty, and staff.  Odd that diversity in political perspective is not championed to the same degree as ethnic, gender, and socio-economic diversity.  The University of Iowa’s College of Law is guilty not only of illegal discrimination, but of hypocrisy of the highest order.  What kind of microsope would be applied to this case if 49 of the 50 law faculty were anglo and professor Wagner was black or hispanic, or if 49 of the 50 were male.

  • baatap

    Regarding your main point . . . first, of course, religious institutions are exceptional.  Why should a Muslim or Jewish place of worship be forced to hire a Christian or an avowed, vocal atheist?  It makes no sense unless we, as a nation, are prepared to say that people of faith do not have a right to practice their faith in peace.  And, second, surely you do not believe that something being “legal” ends the debate!  Remember, Jim Crow was once legal.  Thank God we did not throw up our hands and say, “What can we do?  It’s legal, you know.”  History is full of examples of immoral laws.   

  • http://bonalibro.us Bonalibro

    So I guess you think “Conservatives” are all such nice accommodating people who don’t treat everyone to the left of Attila the Hun as anathema to the country and the culture. 

    Here FYI is Lewis Powell’s letter to the Chamber of Commerce, sparking a movement that turned our successful middle class democracy into a failed Corporatist Oligarchy in one generation.

    http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/powell_memo_lewis.html

    Some quotes:”No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack.1 This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.

    There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy.

    But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.”

    There’s a huge conspiracy to destroy the free enterprise system. Really? Or was it just a desire to see businesses become more responsive to people’s concerns about the quality, healthfulness and safety of the products they purchased?

    “The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.”

    It would seem that the professoriate is the number one enemy, followed by the churches, (naturally concerned with public morals,) the media (a separate “estate” constitutionally protected as the watchdogs of the public interest.) 

    “Evaluation of Textbooks 
    The staff of scholars (or preferably a panel of independent scholars) should evaluate social science textbooks, especially in economics, political science and sociology. This should be a continuing program.

    The objective of such evaluation should be oriented toward restoring the balance essential to genuine academic freedom. This would include assurance of fair and factual treatment of our system of government and our enterprise system, its accomplishments, its basic relationship to individual rights and freedoms, and comparisons with the systems of socialism, fascism and communism. Most of the existing textbooks have some sort of comparisons, but many are superficial, biased and unfair.”

    I remember in Economics 101, the professor trotted that old saw about the “the tragedy of the commons” that “legitimized Great Britain’s enclosure movement, and supposedly demonstrated the superiority of private pasturage. The idea was that, (following the principles of Ayn Rand) rational people would keep adding one more sheep to the commons until the pasure was destroyed. It was later discovered that the commons were well regulated, people did not act according to Randian principles, and the commons were not destroyed by individuals acting selfishly. But it would seem to me that deregulated markets have been proven to act in accordance with the tragedy of the commons mythology.

    We have seen the civil rights movement insist on re-writing many of the textbooks in our universities and schools. The labor unions likewise insist that textbooks be fair to the viewpoints of organized labor. Other interested citizens groups have not hesitated to review, analyze and criticize textbooks and teaching materials. In a democratic society, this can be a constructive process and should be regarded as an aid to genuine academic freedom and not as an intrusion upon it.

    If the authors, publishers and users of textbooks know that they will be subjected — honestly, fairly and thoroughly — to review and critique by eminent scholars who believe in the American system, a return to a more rational balance can be expected.”

    Restoring the balance? Would that not seem to indicate that textbooks had been written in ways that were favorable to the establishment, and the establishment wished to keep them that way?”

    “Balancing of Faculties 

    Perhaps the most fundamental problem is the imbalance of many faculties. Correcting this is indeed a long-range and difficult project. Yet, it should be undertaken as a part of an overall program. This would mean the urging of the need for faculty balance upon university administrators and boards of trustees.

    The methods to be employed require careful thought, and the obvious pitfalls must be avoided. Improper pressure would be counterproductive. But the basic concepts of balance, fairness and truth are difficult to resist, if properly presented to boards of trustees, by writing and speaking, and by appeals to alumni associations and groups.”

    To me that indicates that approved Conservatives should be given places as opportunities arose, and perhaps the courts should be used to guarantee that outcome.

  • gmd1057

    Midlevel and elite colleges and universities see the rest of society as insufficiently deferential to them. People in those institutions know they are smart, and have worked hard at being smart, yet society feels it can take or leave them as it sees fit. Society has many priorities, and deferring to sheer knowledge (or, to the keepers of the existing knowledge of the moment) is never its top priority.

    Practical people, who do things that benefit themselves by benefitting others, dominate that larger society. That often means they work in some sort of blue-collar or white-collar business or another. The dominant philosophy, whether thought through or instinctual, is pragmatic.

    To see themselves and present themselves as superior, academics are adversarial and critical toward that larger society. To them, that larger society is malevolent or at least a threat, simply by its very existence, let alone because of its degree of success and influence.

    For academics, academia (especially its more elite areas and non-pragmatic fields) is “cosa nostra”, “our thing.” They don’t want “the enemy” inside the fortress with them.

    So only the adversarial and critical mentality is appropriate, and allowed in.

    The dominant academic mentality is functionally a religion (i.e., a way of saying how things are, evaluating what is good and bad, and showing believers how to act). A bunch of true-believing Baptists are not willingly going to start admitting a bunch of true-believing Unitarians.

  • frankschmidt

    There are many reasons, unrelated to politics, why a particular individual wouldn’t get a particular job. Wood prejudges the case here based on incomplete information and the status of the plaintiff in a self-described “victimized group.” He assumes the consequent, i.e., that liberals are incapable of reasoned or dispassionate judging of a conservative applicant.

    Imagine if Ms Wagner’s claim were that she was denied employment because she is a woman, or  a racial minority. Would Mr. Wood would be so quick to cry sexism or racism?

    This article is hardly in keeping with the goal of NAS “to sustain the tradition of reasoned scholarship and civil debate”, let alone “high intellectual standards.”

  • rsgassle

    The only evidence of discrimination presented in this article is that a single professor opposed her appointment. Flimsy. 

  • _perplexed_

    People certainly have the right “to practice their faith in peace.” But why must my taxes provide financial support for their practice? 

  • kirtasiye

    Just agree with the ideas. In this article I’ll be your follower and sharer.

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