Last year, there was a rather ridiculous tempest in a tea cup in which our local conservative “alternative” student newspaper, the Morris North Star, published some sick racist crap, and I suggested that the campus ought to throw the paper out, and then they threatened to sue me. Nothing happened, except that the North Star stopped publishing for the rest of the semester — I think they probably ran out of money.
This year, I thought we might be rid of them. Their lawyers had gone silent, and no more crappy editions appeared. Unfortunately, our luck has run out, and new slimy stuff has appeared.
I thought I’d do them a favor. Since they’re so touchy about people taking their paper — they now say on the cover, First Copy: FREE. All subsequent copies are $5
— I thought I’d encourage you all to take zero copies. But if you’re really curious, I thought I’d be nice and summarize the content for you.
Cover: Eagle in the sky. We Are Back
. Really, we didn’t miss you guys.
Page 2: Staff list and contents. Most of the people seem to be named Geiger
.
Page 3: Public service announcement that the paper contains SATIRE
. A short letter from the publisher, Geiger
again, that promises an alternative perspective
, and multiple whines about how their issues were stolen last year.
Page 4: Two-page article by the Geiger
about how Liberals are the New Conservatives
. It’s incoherent. It seems to mainly be arguing that liberals are now the majority, so they’re the conservatives, while conservatives are growing, so someday they’ll be the liberals? What?
Page 6: Another two pages. It’s a table, titled The Morris One Percent
, listing the salaries of administrators and all the faculty at UMM (this is public information in Minnesota, so no big deal). If you must know, I’m listed with a salary of $63,100.
Page 8: Fighting Morris Rape Culture: The 1% Who Assault the Rest of Us
. It’s got nothing to do with rape, actually: they’re claiming that all those rich professors listed on the previous two pages, and particularly the administrators, are raping all the students. Every paragraph uses this metaphor, equating paying tuition to being raped. Yes, you are allowed to vomit now.
Page 9: Photographic evidence! They set up a camera and caught a couple of students throwing away their newspaper. Not mentioned is that these are really old copies from the middle of last spring semester — I’ve been wondering if the custodial staff was afraid to toss out the litter because of our litigious students. I was amused by one thing: the camera is clearly set up in the tunnel beneath the science building. They must have been hoping to catch me.
Page 10: What is Academic Excellence for YOUR Race?
, by a Geiger
. Long whine about how white people are held to a higher standard; photo of white student in middle of the page with caption, Meet Justin. He’s whiter than paper but said he’s black so now held to lower standards.
You can vomit again.
Page 11: Full page ad asking people to advertise with them.
Page 12: Three page article on Islamic Rage and the Secular Retreat
. Liberals are just not sufficiently intolerant to defeat the evil that is Islam. Includes a photo of militants shooting people, captioned ISIS leaders or Sandy Olson-Loy enforcing the speech code? You decide.
They really, really hate our vice-chancellor for student affairs, so much so that they’ll compromise a serious article by making a joke of murder. They also have a photo of ISIS troops rolling down a city street captioned If you look hard enough, you might see President Obama’s cousin in the background.
Surely you don’t have any vomiting left to do now, do you?
Page 15: Two-pager, Ending Rape Culture: Stop Pretending Like There Is One.
Basically a bunch of familiar MRA talking points and dismissal of rape. Opening line: Because the line between real life and the programming on Lifetime is non-existent for college administrators, we get to hear a never-ending bitch-session from uppity lezbos about rape culture.
In between multiple snipes at Sandy Olson-Loy (man, do they ever hate her), we get weird rationalizations about emasculating administrators. And we know what they want because they’re stupid enough to tell us what they want. They want a sexless world, or a world freed from any fun sex.
Apparently, diminishing rape on campus is synonymous with taking all the fun out of sex. Did you know there is an extremely low female rape rate and the extremely high male rape rate
? I didn’t either. Too bad your guts have been thoroughly purged by now, because this would be a really good time to puke.
Page 17: An ad! They actually got someone to advertise in their rag! It’s from something called the Golden Liberty Foundation, based in…Morris? Founded by a Geiger
? Oh.
Page 18-19: The Importance of Tolerance
. This one is completely out of tone with the rest of the paper; it’s a couple of pages on how we should be nice to one another. I think they asked a liberal for a contribution.
Page 20, the end at last: The back cover is simply three photos of three students, labeled GUILTY
. I presume these are the students who cleaned out the antiquated trash from the hallways?
That’s all. Now you may leave the rag to molder on their racks. I hope they can eventually be disposed of, though — they were cluttering up our nice clean shiny building for so long before.
Did they slime you again about ‘stealing’ their precious words?
So they’re advocating free tuition for everyone, or…?
It’s too bad Morris can’t be one of those campuses where the local alt-weekly is all about UFOs.
Wait, you’re not going to throw out that copy you’re quoting from, are you? I would hardly want to raise their ire. After all, you may be featured on their back page if they catch you tossing out their paper.
_____
This Geiger (these Geiger…?) is quite the bigot. Is there any policy Geiger (It may be a collective) may be violating if not flaunting with any of the language used?
Also, I’m confused (well, not just confused): What exactly are any of the articles supposed to be satirizing? If it’s satire there should be some clue, subtle or obvious, as to what material is being satirized.
No? Alright, then.
PZ:
Was there a smell of Science™ lingering about?
:sigh: Seriously, conservative idiots, update your screeds – the whole uppity lezbos bit was old and tired in the ’70s.
Not vomiting. Laughing at them (him?). It’s no wonder conservatives are so bad at humor; they’re jokes themselves.
“Page 20, the end at last: The back cover is simply three photos of three students, labeled
GUILTY”
Ohh, goody! A libel suit.
Johnradke @ #2, I was wondering about that too. Seriously, though, and not as a lead-in to a rape joke. I don’t know how someone could make that equivocation without following through on the outcomes and thinking, ‘Oh, that doesn’t make any sense at all.’ It’s as if they didn’t actually think it through. Surprising, I’m sure.
I mean, is there some threshold in their mind for tuition fees above which they would constitute ‘rape’ and below which they would not? Let alone all the obvious fail, that’s not how rape works. The threshold for rape is rape. Not to beat a dead horse, but it doesn’t make any fucking sense, not on any level at all. It’s a fractally bad analogy. I cannot wrap my head around all the thinking it would take to be so wrong. But maybe it’s not so instantly obvious how wrong it is or something.
So, after the first copy in the pile was taken, the rest cost $5 apiece? I’ve been looking for an alternate form of bit-coin…
This is an elaborate Poe right? Because why would anyone put out a newspaper these days instead of doing up a flashy website? So this is just something being done to mock us old people who remember the days when campuses swarmed with a variety of “independent” student newspapers, right?
(Seriously – that sounds like the independent “conservative” rag that I saw copies of periodically during my undergrad days in the early 1990s. The articles even sound like the same goddamn articles!)
Hmm…be interesting to run a paragraph or two through a plagiarism tracker…except I wouldn’t want to cause the software to barf up bits of bytes.
That’s just your official salary as a university employee.
It doesn’t include all the consulting fees you rake in from Big Cephalopod.
So I’ll assume by the rundown that they still have no idea what satire is.
So the whole “oh, we’re moving them to Dallas” thing was a charade, and the North Stars really moved to Morris? Well played, NHL, well played.
Is Kari Takko still the goalie?
@7
Libel in the US runs into a difficult proposition: damages. You have to prove that the medium they used would be read by an audience, and that a reasonable person would take it seriously.
It’s hard to imagine this paper meeting either of those two criteria.
So if it’s satire, then that means they actually like what the administrators get paid? And they think that there is a real rape culture? And they don’t think that affirmative action is bad?
You know what else is public information?
The UM-Morris personnel directory. A search for “Geiger” only turns up two people, and one can be reasonably ruled out because it is a middle name. And it lists an e-mail address for the other one.
And the UM-Morris Student Organization Directory. The entry for The Morris NorthStar lists two Geigers, one as Editor-in-Chief and the other as Publisher. There is also a Wingenbach listed as Managin(sic) Editor. Once again, e-mail addresses are listed for two of those.
jerthebarbarian
That’s totally unfair. In the early1990s, they hardly ever ranted about Islam taking over the world; they were still banging on about Red China back then. Granted, if you swap out the Communist and Communism for Muslim and Islam, they sure sound awfully familiar.
I assume the call for ads was that satire.
Also, what exactly did they catch with their hidden camera? Was it people throwing out papers out of the rack, or just tossing copies someone left on the ground?
We have always been at war with SouthAsia.
Or someone picking up a copy, thumbing through it and seeing nothing worth reading, and then tossing it.
It’s a relief to learn that my faculty position pays better than PZ’s. Now I can strut about with a sense of superiority … provided I don’t cross paths with the football coach.
Yeah, I should have pointed out that we’re actually underpaid relative to the other institutions in the UM system.
Geiger? How appropriate. Someone get him the world’s tiniest violin to play in sympathy with the terrible persecution he faces as a white man.
The Administration could post a sign informing them that items left in the racks (on the tables?) for more than 2 weeks will be tossed. Recycling the first copy will be free; additional copies trashed will cost “Geiger” $5 each.
Was that for the year you were department head? Still, you are correct, teaching universities don’t pay as well as research universities. At least according to ACS statistics for chemistry professors.
Best belly laugh this week. A very noble,sagacious, and ironic suggestion.
Thanks for taking one for the team … so others don’t have to.
Upon graduation*, Geiger’s place in the Murdoch empire is assured.
*May not be necessary.
I suspect the note on satire is there to protect them in the event of a serious backlash. ‘It’s satire! Can’t you rapid lesbo’s take a joke?’
Ah, the all inclusive disclaimer. “Don’t take any of this sh~t seriously, it’s all SATIRE. Satire = sayin rude stuff, pretending to believe it, to make fun out of how bad somethin is.”
— I think Colbert would like a word with you, Northstar. ^_^ …
Seriously though, college newspapers can never be taken seriously, they’re staffed with amateur journalists or journalists-in-training. And students are always angry at the administrators for making big bucks while the students get drained of future “big bucks”. The problem here, is that this newspaper has “drunk the kool-aid” that they are a significant paper; as in Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, stratosperical levels. /snark
.
Cease and Desist orders for publishing “spoilers” of their holy paper: incoming …10… 9… 8… …
erp, I forgot to add @30:
Geiger??? as in H.R.Geiger? Geiger was subtly explicit in his artwork, both horror and eroticism masterfully combined. I doubt this is a descendant, but the name just gobsmacked me. (not to mention Geiger-counter’s inventor).
Well, another profession I’m glad I never got into. That is some serious salary suckage. I hope your other endeavors pay well.
addendum…for someone with a PhD in biology, that is. If you had gone to work for “the man”, you could reasonably expect to double that.
I’m guessing that the SATIRE tag gets retroactively appended to any articles that offend someone.
twas brillig @ 32:
As his name was H.R. Giger, that would be a no.
Yep, any comparison to the articles and real satire is purely coincidental. Nothing but CYA.
@31 twas brillig…
I’ll take exception to that characterization, as a former reporter for a campus newspaper. Yes, I was a journalist in training, as was everyone else on staff. That was the point. Many, if not most of us, went on to work in the news profession.
We did serious work, writing about serious issues. Including covering anti-war protests on and off campus that no other news outlet covered. I personally saw one of my stories about the deplorable conditions at the city “dog pound” get turned into a consent decree against the city when the local Human Society saw it and sued. Without my story, who knows how many dogs would have been stored in outdoor pens in the freezing cold? My story stopped that.
And we didn’t get paid, and didn’t even get course credits.
Why does UMM allow hate speech and bullying to flourish on its campus?
Humane…I can’t even blame auto-correct.
Kevin @ 33:
You know, there are a fucktonne of people who would be utterly joyous to be able to make 60K a year. You might want to keep that in mind, the next time you’re tempted to shake your head over how darn sucky that happens to be.
I’m curious- doesn’t the University of Minnesota have anti-hate speech rules? If what you posted about the “Ending Rape-Culture” part on page 15 is a direct quote it seems like this publication would run afoul of such rules regardless of how “satirical” it was.
@41…for a PhD in biology — that’s an awful salary. In corporate America, even today, there’s a high demand for PhDs in the life sciences, with salaries commensurate.
If your salary expectations don’t measure up…well, I’m sorry. But that doesn’t negate the fact that PZ could be doing much better elsewhere.
Hans Rudolf Giger != Hans Geiger. Pronounced differently, too: [ˈɡiːɡər] vs [ˈɡaɪ̯ɡər].
Kevin @ 43:
My name is not a number. It’s right there, see if you can manage to use it.
Let me put this in a way you might understand: your privilege is showing, dear. Check it. And while you’re doing that, try to shut the fuck up and stop digging.
You’re horribly underpaid.
@Weatherwax
Rapid ones? There’s a mental image I don’t need.
The Golden Liberty Foundation has a website! I won’t link, but it’s trivial to find.
Indivdual?
Leaving aside the disgusting idea that paying a bill is equivalent to being raped, *hurl*, I though a pillar of conservatism is that free lunches are bad for a society. So Geiger should be happy to pay tuition. Unless she/he doesn’t think he/she is receiving good value for her/his money, in which case, why is Geiger still at UMM? Go somewhere else, Geiger! Everybody will be happier!
Ergh. That paper sounds genuinely dreadful. The one makes me genuinely sick to my stomach to think about.
Kevin Kehres @ 33
Jesus, stuff like this is so incredibly depressing. Over three times what I’ve made in my best year and it’s “salary suckage.” These vast differences in scale are right along the lines of what I was talking about in the Lounge the other day about skewed viewpoints. A modest salary for a professor sounds like a fortune to me and a pittance to someone else.
Someday I’ll live in a world where we’re all valued and society recognizes we all deserve the means of survival. Even if that world is just in my own damn head.
I wonder if Todd Starnes will write an other essay about how PZ Myers is violating the free speech of this paper.
As are all academics and teachers. But it is not out of line with the academic standards for a teaching university.
They’re too dumb to figure out how to tap into the wingnut welfare pipeline then? The conservative rag on my campus got grants from the Olin Foundation.
Because conservativism is so rare in the rural Midwest…
Most post docs are about 50-66% of that salary? It doesn’t seem that bad to me.
Jason @39:
Microraptor@42:
As a state-run institution subject to the First Amendment, it really can’t.
This seems to surprise a lot of people, but there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment in the U.S. See R.A.V. v. St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992) (striking down St. Paul, MN ordinance).
UMM can’t ban “hate speech” any more than it can ban any other kind of speech.
It can (and is probably obligated to) take action to prevent or remedy harassment or discrimination against specific individuals, but UMM can’t ban a newspaper for bigotry any more than the city of Skokie could deny neo-Nazis the right to hold a parade.
re @38:
Kevin, my snark about college newspapers was SATIRE!! [seriously, I did not mean any of that as my actual opinion about college press. apologies, sincerely. Sorry it sounded denigrating.] I was full of errors in those two adjacent posts.
. . .
Geiger vs. Giger: OOPS, phonics led me astray. Even if I’m mispronouncing the phonemes I totally misread geeger & gieger
seriously? the median household income in the US is ~$50000. get a fucking grip.
I have to ask — what kind of output does Golden Liberty shower the world with?
#47 NitricAcid : “Rapid ones? There’s a mental image I don’t need.”
Opps
How does this maroon actually fund the production of this rag? Although calling it a rag is granting it a little more credibility than it deserves. >.<
As you would expect, a liberturdian fuckwitted “think” tank (the “gold” standard is a dog whistle). Think is in quotes since no liberturd can think through a thought to its end, which usually refutes their theology.
Business and engineering faculty tend to be extraordinarily well-paid compared to those in the humanities, social sciences, and basic sciences, though. Like almost double the starting salary well-paid.
Really? Here we get paid by level we are at. I don’t think the department makes a difference (unless of course in chancellery)
$63,100? One would think that an expert in cephalopods would command a much higher salary than that. After all, they will take over the planet after we’re through fucking it up. I probably shouldn’t say this, but my wife teaches modern dance at a well known Southern college and she makes $85,000 (she got a bump after a hellish 5 years being chair of the Theatre Dept.) You should have taken up dancing PZ. That’s where the money is.
Those people are nugging futs!
Some (USA) context for the salary talk going on* [2013 dollars, year 2013]:
Median incomes, 90% confidence interval:
Earnings of full-time, year-round workers (uses “Median income (dollars)” column), 90% confidence interval:
Household income at selected percentiles: (income :: standard error)
Real median earnings of: (earnings :: standard error)
Female-to-male earnings ratio:
Poverty thresholds for 2013 by size of family:
Number, Percent-in-group of people below poverty: (number (in thousands) / percent)
Number, Percent-in-group of families below poverty: (number (in thousands) / percent)
All of which means that the $63,100 salary PZ gets is**:
├ 1.21 times the median household income in the US,
│
├ 0.96 times the median family household income
│ ├ 0.82 times the median family household (married couples) income,
│ ├ 1.79 times the median family household (female householder, no husband present) income,
│ └ 1.25 times the median family household (male householder, no wife present) income,
│
├ 2.02 times the median nonfamily household income,
│ ├ 2.39 times the median nonfamily household (female householder) income,
│ └ 1.71 times the median nonfamily household (male householder) income,
│
├ 1.08 times the median income for those under 65 years of age,
├ 1.77 times the median income for those 65 years and older,
│
├ 1.26 times the median earnings of full-time, year-round workers (men),
├ 1.61 times the median earnings of full-time, year-round workers (women),
│
├ 5.09 times the 10th percentile limit for median household income,
├ 1.21 times the 50th percentile limit for median household income,
├ 0.96 times the 60th percentile limit for median household income,
├ 0.42 times the 90th percentile limit for median household income,
│
├ 1.58 times the real median earnings of total workers (male),
├ 2.28 times the real median earnings of total workers (female),
├ 1.26 times the real median earnings of full time, year-round workers (male),
├ 1.61 times the real median earnings of full time, year-round workers (female),
│
├ 5.21 times the 2013 poverty threshold for: one person / under 65,
├ 5.65 times the 2013 poverty threshold for: one person / 65 and older,
├ 3.93 – 4.04 times the 2013 poverty threshold for: two people / householder under 65,
├ 3.94 – 4.48 times the 2013 poverty threshold for: two people / householder 65 and older,
├ 2.58 – 2.67 times the 2013 poverty threshold for: four people,
└ 1.22 – 1.40 times the 2013 poverty threshold for: nine people,
And to make a particular point: PZ’s salary is more than five times the income of over 12.2 million households (not persons) in the US. Further, doubling his salary to $126,200 would put him comfortably in the 90th percentile of households in the US (105,910 – 150,000].
_______________
* Sources is the United States Census Bureau’s report “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013”, available at census.gov, and with the report itself at census.gov [PDF].
** Not in the mind to figure out significant digits, so keep that in mind.
Aside 1: interesting how the stats only pair females with husbands, and males with wives. And other such things as only male and female.
Aside 2: I skipped over the race-based stats, but there are major differences between white and black. And (obviously) very much in favor of the whites. And hispanics are pretty much in the same boat as blacks.
And yes, I do have too much time on my hands today.
Wait wait wait- they’re saying that university faculty is a salaried position, but university student isn’t? Oh my god these guys are idiots.
So… if having to pay for education is tantamount to rape, which political party is responsible for this mass ‘rape’ by consistently slashing education funding? Strange, isn’t this a conservative rag? They seem awfully keen to drive everyone towards liberalism.
But but didn’t you lot just argue the case that there is a rape culture in that you have to pay for your education? Stay on message, people!
So yeah anyway, that rage sounds like unmitigated drivel. You have my laughter.
dreikin @66,
Seriously, no need to apologise. Actual data is crucial for this sort of debate. It’s harder to be clueless about wealth inequality when the numbers are right in front of you.
But I hate Illinois Nazis!
Back when I was working at a university, my public salary disclosure included health insurance benefits, retirement, my social security contribution, employer’s social security contribution; indeed, virtually everything but the air I breathed. Take home pay was something like half what was listed.
I don’t know whether PZ’s runs the same way or not, but I have my suspicions.
While the stats are interesting, the original point that was being made was specifically comparing PZ to others with a Ph.D. in biology, so those stats would be the most useful if we want to figure out whether he’s overpaid or not. Getting a Ph.D. represents a considerable investment of both time and money, and any universe where it DIDN’T get a commensurate award would seem kind of messed up to me.
Sure, there are some countries where the state picks up the cost of educating doctors, and then doctors don’t get paid much more than anybody else, but that always seemed likely to deter the smartest people from going into medicine, and thus not really the ideal system either.
If we want to redistribute the wealth, we need to focus on the top five or ten percent. The ones in the sixtieth aren’t really the problem; moreover, they don’t have enough to make much of a difference.
And of course salary and other financial benefits are all anyone cares about, or should care about, in relation to their job. Job satisfaction? Pfft. Autonomy? Meh. Actually doing some good? Pah!
Wait, people still use ‘uppity’ seriously?
That is a poor salary for someone doin something as important as teaching.
That it is a good salary compared to so many household incomes in the world’s richest nation simply speaks of the disgusting inequality that overvalues jobs of imaginary worth (like hedge fund management) and massively under pays people who create real value and do the real work.
Sorry, does your title ‘professor’ mean the same thing in the US as it does in Australia? Because here professors make double (or more!) that salary, and I’m wondering if it’s a linguistic difference or if you’re just vastly under-appreciated.
75 comments and no one’s yet made a joke about PZ being a Geiger counter?
Shocking.
Nerd
I can seriously expect to earn that money as a highschool teacher when I get to PZ’s age. In Germany. And I’m not even talking about what my husband earns as a well-educated technician in the chemical industry…
Professor does not mean the same as it does here in Australia. There I think it means ‘lecturer’
anym @ 73:
Use, yes.
Seriously, no.
(They may think they are serious, but the reality…)
So, according to them, there is an epidemic of rape against men that is being hushed up and veiled in myths about rape, but it doesn’t merit being called “rape culture” and does not require alarm?
WHY DO THEY HATE MEN
Dammit, why can’t I get this periodicalin the UK?
Rey Fox @ 35
It would be very instructive to pull out the newspaper and ask them to point out which bits are satire. Before the criticism came in.
@80 Forbidden Snowflake
Only one of these conservative permateens could possibly contradict themselves so obviously in the same paragraph and still be convinced that they have delivered a killer, flawless blow. They are almost funny, except that we have to endure their existence and that’s no fun….
jerthebarbarian @ 10 – you put out a paper because students sitting around campus are more likely to read something lying in front of them than go to a website.
susan @ 25
I don’t know how other schools handle it, but my students collected the previous copies of our paper to count them (so we could estimate circulation on campus). I asked the custodial staff not to remove them for that reason.
brucegee1962 @ 71
Hi, let me introduce you to reality, where PZ’s teaching salary is a good $20K higher than anyone I know, including me. A group of people with PhDs, teaching at the university level for more than 5 years, all making a fraction of what he is paid. Even granting that he’s been teaching for a while and gained full professorship and tenure, if I had remained teaching, that might someday have been my “I’m near retirement” salary if I was lucky.
People (in general) need to stop thinking college faculty get paid fabulous salaries for dwelling in ivory-covered towers. We get paid shit, even the ones on tenure-track, and especially anyone outside STEM. There’s a reason I and a lot of other people have abandoned the field despite being good at our jobs.
I’d be curious to know what the actual 1% level would be for Morris, just to fact check, since it doesn’t sound like they made many factual claims, just printed a bunch of crappy opinions. I’m a bit surprised at all the debate over PZ’s salary: on the low side of average overall for professors, more on the low side for large state university main campuses, probably more average for campuses like UMM, way better than the unfortunate adjuncts make, but basically, a decent living that it’s an injustice that more people don’t make. Also, about what I make and about what my wife makes as department chair of a nationally recognized department in the area of performing arts for which a decent case could be made that her gender plays a role in her salary being low for the University.
But what would the 1% in Morris be? PZ doesn’t tell us what the president or other administrators make, I’m sure they all make more than PZ. I’m sure there are a number of professors making more. Being a relatively rural area, there’s probably some downward pull on the income distribution from that, as well as students with little to no income and adjunct, but there are probably a significant proportion of the population of Morris who are professors so I’m willing to go out on a limb and bet that PZ is not in the 1% of Morris.
Jeeze PZ, 63K at full professor? You need to come over to the dark side and join us here in MnSCU.
It would be fun hearing them argue that nobody reads their paper.
And even inside STEM, if you’re not doing the most recent and bleeding-edge applied technology portion of STEM. Ask anyone doing basic science on things like taxonomy and ecology and anything that isn’t human/healthcare centric.
They do list the chancellor’s salary: over $200K.
We aren’t the biggest employer in the county — that honor goes to Superior Industries, a company that makes grain elevators and other such farm equipment. We also have Riley Bros. Construction, which recently suffered some legal setbacks for tax evasion and corruption. So no, the people doing the work of the university aren’t in the 1%.
MnSCU does pay better! Being unionized makes a difference. Even the faculty at Crookston, another UM branch, make more money than we do.
U Frood @ 87
“Listen, nobody reads our paper–we’ve checked. And besides, anybody who reads our paper knows not to believe what’s in there anyway–so how could we hurt your reputation?”
It would be amazing to hear that in a court, with the judge nodding away.
BTW, I did a couple of years on my own college newspaper. We took great pride in delivering a product that had useful things for the students, fun things for the students, and as high a quality of news as the local newspapers.
I mean, GREAT pride. I know the other guys on that newspaper went on to careers in journalism. I was one of the few there who was only in it as a side-hobby.
Christ, you guys aren’t AAUP? Sheesh. Get it together, man. ;-)
BTW, around here it’s college of business, engineering, and medicine that rake in the big bucks. Way above the S and the M in STEM. Way above anyone in the college of arts and sciences, really. The only people making more are the President (though he’s been refusing his annual raise in solidarity with the rest of the University in tough budget times, a slick PR move, at the least), and of course, the real money makers, athletics!
More likely due to the fact that she is in dance, rather than say egineering or science.
You know where else I’m hearing that argument? From the slymers on twitter. They also simultaneously argue that a) no one reads FtB, that we’re crashing and burning, that no one believes what we write anyway, and b) they have to target the biggest, orneriest, meanest bullies on the planet, which is FtB, because we’re picking on them.
Holms @ 93
According to the statistics on http://www.higheredjobs.com/salary there’s an average difference of about 10,000$ between professors of the performing arts (which I think would include dance) and a professor of biological sciences.
carlie @ 88 – yup.
I’m looking at the AAUP report on salaries http://www.aaup.org/file/zreport.pdf
and laughing my ass off to keep from crying. I was an assistant professor at a private college teaching in the social sciences and I made slightly more than half of what they peg as the “average” salary for the type of institution. (The president of the college, btw, is on the list of “highest paid presidents” although I think he’s ranked in the 20s.)
One of my former colleagues said zie believed from research that we were among the lowest paid faculty on that side of the Mississippi. I’m starting to think she was right. And I’m so not sorry I left.
I have a confession to make: I used to write for a college paper just like this back at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee:
I was a young, foolish, late-teenager raised on a steady diet of suburban/rural conservatism and Rush Limbaugh. In high school I had read what a horrible place academia had become with its “PC thought police” suppressing free speech (we didn’t have FREEZE PEACH back then) and Marxist professors flunking God-fearing, free market, American students who stood up for “the Truth.” Therefore, when I came upon my first issue of The UWM Times, I was drawn in by it’s apparent bravado and absolute stand against all things “liberal.”
I started out contributing an piece here and there then I was let on as a staff opinion writer while pulling double-duty as a delivery boy, dropping papers off at the various boxes across campus. As memory serves, the staff was largely made up of business majors, a smattering of humanities majors, more than a couple law-enforcement students, ex-military “adult students” in on the GI bill, but few if any actually journalism students. The content of The UWM Times was exactly like the North Star: so-called news stories that claimed to expose university “corruption (i.e. they’re spending money on programs that we don’t like), editorials and opinion pages that would have made Fox News envious, and various “satirical’ ads and articles that targeted various university officials, professors, student leaders, and left-leaning student groups. We did have an decent sports page, but the book and movie reviews on our entertainment pages were tainted by our paper’s ideology. Pervading it all was this frat-boy mentality that case us as rebels standing up to the entrenched left-wing college establishment with it’s army of sycophantic, easily-duped, students; no commie, femi-nazi, cry-baby-minority, queer-mo-sexual, environmentalist, atheist, multiculturalist was going to tell US what to say and do. (Sound familiar?)
Then, our Opinion Editor–a very scary fellow named Ed Buck–stuck in a piece on the O.J. verdict where he wrote that the only way Simpson got off because the jury wanted to prevent another L.A. riot because Mark Fuhrman used the word “Nigger.”. He followed up with a comment asking that his usage would touch off riots “in the core.” You can imagine the response: Angry students massed at our office door; we ended up on the local news; Buck, the Editor-in-Chief, and several others resigned. The Black Student Union along with several other student minority groups held a rally in the commons demanding the chancellor punish us. Meanwhile, many of the few hangers-on (including myself, sadly) ate it up: “See! The liberals are opposed to FREE SPEECH! Sure, what Buck wrote was out of bounds, but we have every right to publish it!” (Sound familiar?)
Nothing happened officially to us, but the business community, for whom we relied upon for ad revenue, decided that they they just didn’t want their bars and restaurants associated with a racist paper. Soon just about the only money we had coming in was from national right-wing groups and beer ads. The remaining students didn’t have the layout knowledge or writing skills to put out a readable product on a weekly basis, and no new students joined to fill in the growing gaps. Even the local branch of College Republicans, who started and supported The Times, abandoned us. Soon our staff was down to four people trying to put out a paper every two-weeks, then every three…. About a year after the “Ed Buck Incident” we closed down shop.
I don’t look back to my days at The UWM Times with pride. Hell, I don’t look back to my teens-to-early-twenties with any pride at all. I hate the smug, bigoted, loud-mouthed 16-to-24-year-old me, and I’m pretty sure he’d hate the far-more liberal and atheist 40-year-old-me. So fuck you younger me!
Anyway, PZs description of the current North Star, with it’s infrequent publishing schedule and scant staff, reminds me a lot of the last semester of The Times. I got a feeling they’re circling the drain and will not be troubling the Morris campus with it’s bullshit any longer. If so, then good riddens, maybe this Geiger character can get find something productive to do with his life… though I doubt it.
I have a confession to make: I used to write for a college paper just like this back at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee:
I was a young, foolish, late-teenager raised on a steady diet of suburban/rural conservatism and Rush Limbaugh. In high school I had read what a horrible place academia had become with its “PC thought police” suppressing free speech (we didn’t have FREEZE PEACH back then) and Marxist professors flunking God-fearing, free market, American students who stood up for “the Truth.” Therefore, when I came upon my first issue of The UWM Times, I was drawn in by it’s apparent bravado and absolute stand against all things “liberal.”
I started out contributing an piece here and there then I was let on as a staff opinion writer while pulling double-duty as a delivery boy, dropping papers off at the various boxes across campus. As memory serves, the staff was largely made up of business majors, a smattering of humanities majors, more than a couple law-enforcement students, ex-military “adult students” in on the GI bill, but few if any actually journalism students. The content of The UWM Times was exactly like the North Star: so-called news stories that claimed to expose university “corruption (i.e. they’re spending money on programs that we don’t like), editorials and opinion pages that would have made Fox News envious, and various “satirical’ ads and articles that targeted various university officials, professors, student leaders, and left-leaning student groups. We did have an decent sports page, but the book and movie reviews on our entertainment pages were tainted by our paper’s ideology. Pervading it all was this frat-boy mentality that case us as rebels standing up to the entrenched left-wing college establishment with it’s army of sycophantic, easily-duped, students; no commie, femi-nazi, cry-baby-minority, queer-mo-sexual, environmentalist, atheist, multiculturalist was going to tell US what to say and do. (Sound familiar?)
Then, our Opinion Editor–a very scary fellow named Ed Buck–stuck in a piece on the O.J. verdict where he wrote that the only way Simpson got off because the jury wanted to prevent another L.A. riot because Mark Fuhrman used the word “N*gger.” He followed up with a comment asking that his usage would touch off riots “in the core.” You can imagine the response: Angry students massed at our office door; we ended up on the local news; Buck, the Editor-in-Chief, and several others resigned. The Black Student Union along with several other student minority groups held a rally in the commons demanding the chancellor punish us. Meanwhile, many of the few hangers-on (including myself, sadly) ate it up: “See! The liberals are opposed to FREE SPEECH! Sure, what Buck wrote was out of bounds, but we have every right to publish it!” (Sound familiar?)
Nothing happened officially to us, but the business community, for whom we relied upon for ad revenue, decided that they they just didn’t want their bars and restaurants associated with a racist paper. Soon just about the only money we had coming in was from national right-wing groups and beer ads. The remaining students didn’t have the layout knowledge or writing skills to put out a readable product on a weekly basis, and no new students joined to fill in the growing gaps. Even the local branch of College Republicans, who started and supported The Times, abandoned us. Soon our staff was down to four people trying to put out a paper every two-weeks, then every three…. About a year after the “Ed Buck Incident” we closed down shop.
I don’t look back to my days at The UWM Times with pride. Hell, I don’t look back to my teens-to-early-twenties with any pride at all. I hate the smug, bigoted, loud-mouthed 16-to-24-year-old me, and I’m pretty sure he’d hate the far-more liberal and atheist 40-year-old-me. So fuck you younger me!
Anyway, PZs description of the current North Star, with it’s infrequent publishing schedule and scant staff, reminds me a lot of the last semester of The Times. I got a feeling they’re circling the drain and will not be troubling the Morris campus with it’s bullshit any longer. If so, then good riddens, maybe this Geiger character can get find something productive to do with his life… though I doubt it.
“Even the faculty at Crookston, another UM branch, make more money than we do.”
Yeah, but you have to live in Crookston.
@Holms: Except that it’s not just low for the university. There are other causes of suspicion that need not be gone into. Also: not dance. I’m being intentionally vague here, since it’s just a comment and I’d rather not have it in any way identifiable.
@Rey Fox (#35)
I believe that’s known as the “Elam gambit.”
Oops! Sorry for the double post!
Yeah, that sounds like slymer level intellect there.
There’s a lot of variation though, where I live the median household income is barely over $30000. And that’s still not the poorest county in the poorest state.