Old Loyno.info Comments

Since many people suggested a place on this website for discussion and feedback, three blogs were created, but the free blog host disappeared.  Now we have one all-purpose blog.  Please feel free to use it to help further the discussion of any of the issues that are so important to so many people. Use it for discussing everything and anything about our lives at Loyola, in New Orleans, away from New Orleans, whether to leave or to stay — anything you feel like sharing with the rest of us. While it is certainly possible that statements about other people may legitimately become a part of these discussions, keep in mind that remarks that are simply mean or cruel will be deleted.

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[Your Webmasters]

STOP!! Please leave this set of comments as they are and start commenting on the other post.

We are keeping this record available to everyone.

Oh, Norman!
I'm not usually a rubber-necker, but I had to go look at the newsletter. What kind of perverse vanity made that old man put his own picture on the front page? At first I thought he was holding a beer (his usual choice) but I looked closer and saw it was a cup of coffee.

He thinks he's the great writer, and he writes ,"Whew!" Puh-leeze. I don't know whether or not to barf.

What a fraud!

[Norman]

OH JOY, OH RAPTURE UNFORSEEN…..The SYNERGISTIC! College of Societal Knowledge has its own newsletter. In the very first edition, Interim Dean for Life Lorenz likens the spring semester to a rollercoaster ride, and opines: “We are plummeting now, and the car is going even faster as everything is being done for the first time in this new college.” Plummeting indeed…well on our way to becoming Titanic Community College. Everything is being done for the first time? No, much of what we have been doing, spinning our little roller coaster wheels, is reinventing stuff that was in place for years in A&S.

Don’t believe me about the newsletter? Check out http://css.loyno.edu/emails/spring07/

You are also invited to suggest a name for the new just-invented newsletter. Let’s see: Lorenzo’s Oil? Synergy Snippets? The Folly Chronicles? Titanic Tidbits?
The College Picayune? The Stallings Echo? Ex Nihil? Collage of Societal Knowledge?

Your suggestions are welcome!

As another colleague said, the morale at Loyola is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Of course many of the people who were regularly at the grants trough, and who brought in the really big bucks, were terminated.

And most of the rest of the regulars are in such depression over the plight of their beloved university that they can barely lift their heads off their pillows to get to work to teach their classes, much less are they up to writing grants.

Then there are those who are contemptuous of Capowich who never did anything at Loyola then suddenly he spoke up for Pathways, was identified as FOA (friend of administration) and gets some cushy job. Most wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole.

And finally, there's the B. Joyner - Capowich combo. You could put everything they know about grants and what it takes to assist and motivate the people who write them in a thimble -- and you'd still have room for Harris' brain.

Faculty have received the grants and research newsletter at the beginning of every month since December.

To see these newsletters, which include numerous announcements of funding awards and submissions, go to http://www.loyno.edu/ogr/

[Norman]

Capowich is too busy contemplating the exquisite brilliance of the Pathways Plan and the inspired creation of the SYNERGISTIC! College of Societal Knowledge.

[Bragging Rights]

What's going on in Grants & Research? Have you seen the recent e-newsletter (first one in months as best I can tell)?

Check out the NUMBER of grants awarded -- TWO and for a TOTAL of $20,500.

Check out the NUMBER of grants submitted -- FOUR. That's right F-O-U-R.

This is the most pathetic showing I have ever seen in 20 years. It's worse than pathetic, it's embarassing!

What is the golden boy, Capowich, doing? I want Gary Talarchek back!

[Et tu, Brute!]

As my dear friend Cicero once said:

"O tempora! O mores!"

This is, indeed, a tragedy. The adminstration may now finally realize that their assault on faculty was not the brightest move. So now they are once again turning their attention to the most vulnerable members of our community -- our staff.

How can they justify a nearly half million in surplus money to distribute for what, while terminating staff positions? Now that Cornwell is GONE, who is dreaming up these new ways to drop morale even lower? Is it this wonderful consultant from Loyola, Baltimore we're only just now hearing about (even though he has been behind the scenes for over 2 years, colluding with Wildes)? Just think, our administrators have been paying this guy for 2 years to tell them how to throw Loyola into the gutter. What a cash cow we must be for him!

[Titanic Community College]

Et tu:

You are so right. I know of one staff member who is on the termination list and this person has been a dedicated, loyal, hard-working, very intelligent person. The termination came from nowhere.

[You've been served!]

Any truth to the rumor I've heard this week that the first process server has been on campus giving notice of the first claim being filed against W & H and Loyola for wrongful termination due to Pathways?

Can LUNO expect to see more in the not too distant future?

[Et tu, Brute!]

TCC,

No wonder Harris has $300-500k to distribute. It's blood money, drawn from an already diminshed staff doing three times the work they had to do before Katrina. Perhaps it's time for them to organize a sit-in or some protest of their own. No, they are not protected like we used to be. We (faculty and students)should do it on their behalf.

[Titanic Community College]

Have heard from staff that stealth staff firings continue. The campus community won't hear of these until the summer when the new fiscal year starts.

[Et tu, Brute!]

Has anyone else seen this subject header from the most recent campus-wide IT e-mail?

"Spring President's Forum on Immigration"

Does this mean that Loyola now has a president for every season? Or that Wildes only comes out in Spring? Could this be why he has been virtually in visible -- because he was hibernating for the Winter? It goes a long way to explaining why dearly departed John Cornwell thought he was running the show.

10:00 AM:

Whoever thinks Frank Scully was helpful in this ought to talk to the terminated faculty. Here are a few of the facts.

Those who tried to contact him were disappointed because he never returned phone calls or replied to emails.

He refused to testify in any of the hearings, even to say that the financial information on education that was originally reported to SCAP was inaccurate.

He sent one person a curt email that said simply turn over all software and licenses to me immediately. That person asked him in an email why he had acted it such a manner and he never replied.

And that he and pock-faced Kvet could let them close Education without ever mentioning 70 music majors needed an education minor is criminal.

Deans should represent the interests of the faculty and students in their colleges. These guys looked out after their own interests.

[Lynn Koplitz]

I ran into Julian on the sidewalk just before the Bacchus parade in 2003. He had been undergoing treatments for the disease that killed him. He got that twinkle in his eye and grinned at me. Then he said, "Now I know what it feels like to be an administrator. I have been living off of other people's blood."

[Et tu, Brute!]

As a dearly departed colleague, Julian Wasserman, said to me when I was a wet-behind-the-ears assistant prefessor so very long ago:

"Social justice stops just inside the doors of Marquette Hall."

Julian, I wish you were here now. I would give anything to hear what you would be saying about Pathways.

[observer]

Yes, and "everyone involved" is the entire Loyola community from faculty to students to alumni to staff, administrators and board members. Even SUNO is working to address injustices. How can the Jesuit institution that claims to stand for, even teach, critical thinking and just action do any less?

[concerned for my colleagues]

On March 8, the University Rank and Tenure Committee sent letters to Wildes concerning their unanimous decisions in favor of the 5 tenured faculty members who have appealed their terminations. Has Wildes responded to anyone? Will he sit on his hands forever, keeping all of these good people and their families in limbo? Doesn't he know what to do or how to do it?

There are jobs at Loyola that could be done by these faculty members. In spite of the fact that their academic programs have been cancelled, they are needed on Loyola's campus, if they are willing to return.

They were wrongfully terminated. Here is one of the huge 'mistakes' that were made. Address it. Now.

Justice. Restitution. Resolution. Now.

If not, this 'mistake' is just going to cost everyone involved more and more and more in terms of money, time, reputation, good will, and spirit.

9:02 a.m.:

"And we can give the "men who dressed up as women and children in order to save themselves" award to Frank Scully and some others."

I'm trying, but it is hard to conjure up a more inaccurate and mean-spirited comment than that one. I know of few if any Loyola people who have fought harder against all this craziness, from day one, than Scully. Seems to me that he and a few others, having seen that their ability to effect change had been crushed from on high, had to choose between unending frustration or going someplace where they could make a positive difference. The Titanic analogy would be more like, "those who saw the iceberg coming, beat on the wheelhouse door to no effect, foresaw the inevitable, and swam away to guide other ships away from the danger."

[Titanic Community College]

Have SCAP decide on the award criteria, and the Senate will approve the criteria.

W will surely by-pass this process requirement and therefore guarantee that W gives the E.J. Smith Award to himself.

I also laughed at Stan's suggestion. But it was my humorless, cynical post-Pathways laugh.

If the Titanic hit the iceberg and sank because the captain was immature, arrogant, stubborn and too busy to have a personal understanding of details, then we need to give the award to Wildes.

If the wreck happened because the captain was unintelligent and more concerned with finding a cool-sounding word like "Pathways" than with devising a plan that would actually save the ship and its passengers, then Harris gets the award.

I guess we need to decide on the criteria.

And we can give the "men who dressed up as women and children in order to save themselves" award to Frank Scully and some others.

17 faculty members earned the "throw them to the sharks" award.

[Et tu, Brute!]

Stan,

I have not been able to stop laughing since reading your blog. There is only one difficulty to presenting the award. The deserving party is yet to show his face in a public venue involving faculty, staff or students for more than 5 minutes at a time. At last year's Honors Convocation for the college formerly known as Arts and Sciences, he was on stage long enough to give his 3 minutes of remarks and then without apology or explanation walked off stage. How insulting to the students being honored and their families! He canceled the fall convocation for 2006 and I understand was not present for New Student Orientation. In order to present him with the award, we'd have to storm his office in Marquette and batter down his door..... provided he is even in his office!

[Stan Makielski]

When you have your student faculty eat-in on April 17, I suggest that would be a perfect occasion to present, to the appropriate person, the E. J. Smith Award. (For those of you who are too busy to have kept up with historical trivia, E. J. Smith was the first, last, and only Captain of the Titanic).

Rumor has it that he is leaving because he is "not going down with this ship." He apparently told a Maroon reporter that Emmanuel is a "great opportunity" or something like that. Sure. All 77 faculty. Boston winter. Small, unremarkable school in the shadow of so many other outstanding ones. Right. Sounds like a big step up.

How much of that work in the HuNS Dean's office is created by Scully himself? He is one of the biggest micro-managers I know.

SACS is done. QEP was taken by the Provost. Ditto for FYE. Budgets have to be approved by the Provost. A & S was split up so HuNS is now a bit smaller. Most of the cuts were made in HuNS. If you want to think about this deeply, all of these items excluding SACS should have been protected by the Dean of HuNS - that should have the chunk of his job.

Don't you all realize why Scully decided to leave? W & H took all the power away from him and he had little of the job to do now except for making sure paperwork gets signed.