Posts by Andy Kroll
Macomb County to use foreclosure list to try to block voters
By Andy Kroll, written on Sep. 11, 2008
The Macomb County Republican Party is planning to prevent people from voting who are on a home foreclosure list in the county, the Michigan Messenger recently reported.
“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” Macomb County GOP chairman James Carabelli told the Messenger.
The article goes on to say:
State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”
The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”
One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.
“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”
As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Hebert called it, “mean-spirited.”
After widespread voting controversies marred the two previous presidential elections, potential voter fraud and voter disenfranchisement have been in the news quite a bit in the past month. And with Michigan sure to be a closely contested state in November, there will surely be more stories of this type in the coming months.
Regent Richner, me and the RNC
By Andy Kroll, written on Sep. 4, 2008
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Wandering the concourses here at the Xcel Energy Center Wednesday night looking for reactions to Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech, I spotted from afar University Regent Andrew Richner (R-Grosse Pointe Park) working the crowd.
Wearing the customary blue blazer, but with a hockey jersey supplied by Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox underneath, Richner, an alternate Michigan delegate, gladly offered his take on Palin’s speech.
“I think she hit it out of the park.,” Richner told me. “A pretty powerful speech for someone that I’d never of — no, I shouldn’t say it that way.”
He added that he was pleased Palin mentioned Michigan in her speech, and said he thought she would be popular among Michigan citizens.
“I think she’s going to resonate with people from Michigan,” he said. “She mentioned Michigan in her speech; she referred directly to Michigan jobs.”
Soon after, as those in attendance flooded the concourses and headed for the exits, their red and blue McCain-Palin placards in hand, Richner talked about the increased attention he’d seen throughout the week given to Michigan and its economic woes.
“They’re paying attention to Michigan,” he told me, “which is — I’ve been to other conventions, I was a delegate in New York (in 2004), and Michigan has not received this kind of attention at any convention I’ve been at.”
A firm handshake and cordial “Take care” later, we went our separate ways, the two of us quickly disappearing amongst the Republican faithfuls who all appeared contented, assured — and a bit worn out.
Michigan GOP: Obama = Granholm
By Andy Kroll, written on Aug. 29, 2008
As election season nears a fever pitch in Michigan in the coming months, look for the state’s Republican Party to connect Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm in much the same way as the McCain campaign likened Obama’s celebrity to that of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
Saul Anuzis, chairman of the Michigan GOP, recently posted on his popular blog, “That’s Saul, folks!” that “Michigan voters know firsthand what happens when you elect inexperienced, smooth-talking politicians with rock-star appeal: Absolutely nothing.”
He continued:
For six years we’ve been listening to Governor Jennifer Granholm give good speeches and watching her pose for well-scripted photo ops, but Michigan voters have gotten nothing for their efforts. In Granholm’s six years in office, Michigan has the single-worse unemployment rate in the nation, one in every 20 homes is in foreclosure, and not one of the five new major automotive assembly plants being built in the United States are located in the birthplace of the world’s auto industry.
Governor Granholm, without exception, is the worse Democrat governor in recent memory, and that Democrats would trot her out for national television interviews shows how unprepared they are to accept the mantle of leadership and move our country forward.
If you like what Jennifer Granholm has done for Michigan, you’ll love what Barack Obama will do to America!
It’s not a surprising move; in fact, what’s surprising is that the Obama-Granholm connection hasn’t been made more often so far.
With Michigan certain to be a hotly contested state between now and Election Day (especially now that McCain didn’t pick Michigan-friendly Mitt Romney as his VP), these kinds of connections and more will be rife throughout the state coming from both parties.
Wait! A university president turned down a six-figure bonus?!
By Andy Kroll, written on Jul. 16, 2008
Asking “to be treated just like everybody else” at his university, James Ramsey, president of the University of Louisville, recently turned down a six-figure bonus offered to him by the school’s trustees.
Ramsey instead accepted a $700 raise, which is the same percentage all UL full-time faculty and staff will receive as a result of this year’s 1 percent salary pool increase, Inside Higher Ed reported.
“This was a tough budget year for us,” Ramsey told Inside Higher Ed. “I don’t want the attention to be focused on me.”
The decision to turn down the $113,857 bonus–or 25 percent of Ramsey’s base salary–was mostly symbolic, as the money would have come from a private foundation and not from university funds. Still, the move resonated with the faculty at UL.
“We think symbolism is very important,” said Beth Boehm, chair of the University of Louisville Faculty Senate. “It’s a gesture that means something. It’s a show that we are one as a university.”
With Kentucky’s state budget strapped for cash and state funding for higher education declining (sounds familiar…), Ramsey isn’t the only university president turning down the extra cash. Inside Higher Ed also reported that University of Kentucky president Lee Todd will only receive a portion of the bonus he is set to receive this year, per his own request.
Although Todd was eligible to receive a $145,500 bonus because of his high performance rating as president, he chose to only receive $95,500 of the bonus and will give the the remaining $50,000 to various programs at the university.
Other possible uses for the Athletic Department’s $2.5 million check to West Virginia University
By Andy Kroll, written on Jul. 10, 2008
The Rich Rodriguez-WVU-He-said-She-said saga ended today with Rodriguez, his lawyers and the University of Michigan agreeing to pay the $4 million buyout clause in Rodriguez’s contract with WVU.
According to reports, Rodriguez will pay $1.5 million of the clause in three annual payments of $500,000 beginning in January 2010. The remaining $2.5 million—along with Rodriguez’s attorney fees—will be paid by the University’s Athletic Department in a single payment made by the end of July.
Below are a few examples of what $2.5 million could’ve paid for had the Athletic Department (whose funds, remember, are independent of the University’s general fund) not covered Rodriguez’s fees and over half of the buyout clause…
The Athletic Department prides itself on the fact that it often gives money out of its own coffers to the University’s general fund, which provides financial aid to University students, among other things.
Had the Athletic Department saw fit to invest that $2.5 million in the futures of University students and not in the ugly past of its football coach, it would’ve covered (according to figures from the University’s Office of Financial Aid) tuition and fees, room and board, books and personal expenses for 113 undergraduate in-state students.
That same $2.5 million would’ve covered those same costs for 58 undergraduate out-of-state students.
Not that there aren’t uses for $2.5 million within the Athletic Department.
That money could’ve lowered football season tickets for students—or anyone buying football tickets for that matter. That money could’ve gone to help fund any number of facilities upgrade projects, like the much needed renovations at Crisler Arena. It could’ve been seed money to help endow the successful men’s lacrosse team. It could’ve endowed individual athletics scholarships for any number of Michigan teams. It might have even helped do away with the loathed preferred seating program at the Big House in which some football season ticket holders have to make an annual donation each year on top of the cost of their tickets just to keep their seats.
And so on and so forth. You get the point. The possibilities that spring to mind for how $2.5 million could’ve been better spent are endless. These are only a few. Do you have any of your own?
Are campuses becoming more moderate as the ’60s-bred profs peace out?
By Andy Kroll, written on Jul. 3, 2008
An interesting article in The New York Times reports that colleges across the country are becoming more moderate as professors whose formative political, ideological and cultural years were the radical and turbulent 1960s near the end of their teaching careers.
Times writer Patricia Cohen narrows in on two professors at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (why not Ann Arbor?!) — Michael Olneck, a former 1960s protester-activist-”pink-diaper baby”-turned-senior professor and Sara Goldrick-Rab, a 1980s-raised assistant professor who plainly states that her generation “is not so ideologically driven” — to illustrate the generational gap between the 1960s-bred profs and their younger replacements that is causing this ideological shift on campuses.
Cohen writes that this generational shift could also be a result of the increasing economic pressures in higher education.
“Changes in institutions of higher education themselves are reinforcing the generational shuffle. Health sciences, computer science, engineering and business — fields that have tended to attract a somewhat greater proportion of moderates and conservatives — have grown in importance and size compared with the more liberal social sciences and humanities, where many of the bitterest fights over curriculum and theory occurred.”
She adds that “At the same time, shrinking public resources overall and fewer tenure-track jobs in the humanities have pushed younger professors in those fields to concentrate more single-mindedly on their careers. Academia, once somewhat insulated from market pressures, is today treated like a business. This switch is a ‘major ideological and philosophical shift in how society views higher education,’ write Jack H. Schuster, and Martin J. Finkelstein in The American Faculty.”
Olneck and other profs from his generation consider the increasing “careerism” seen in their younger colleagues to be a result of these economic pressures.
Cohen cites Jackson Lears, 62, a historian at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who told her, “I don’t think that necessarily means a move to the right, but a less overt stance of political engagement.”
Goldrick-Rab, on the other hand, says her generation, unlike that of Olneck, tends to focus more on data-based academic study rather than the value-based studies and beliefs of their older colleagues. She told Cohen, “Senior people evaluate us for tenure and the standards they use and what we think is important are different.”
Either way, it’s an interesting examination of the seismic changes taking place in higher education today, and an article well worth reading.
Ditch the politics and stick to teaching, says NY Times columnist Fish in new book
By Andy Kroll, written on Jul. 1, 2008
To be perfectly honest, while I enjoy reading Frank Rich’s or Gail Collins’s or David Brooks’s columns each week in the Times (or Kristol if I’m in the mood for a laugh), many of my favorite columns in fact never make it into print–and that’s because they’re the work of Stanley Fish.
Fish, a former professor and dean at Duke and then University of Illinois-Chicago, now pens online columns for the Times on a relatively frequent basis–many of them debating issues related to academia, critical theory (though I can’t for the life of me understand his attraction to the school of New Criticism) and the influences of liberalism and conservatism in the Ivory Towers.
It shouldn’t, then, come as a surprise that Fish–who now has the cushy position of Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University–has a new book out this month with Oxford University Press titled Save the World on Your Own Time, which compiles many of the ideas he espouses in his columns, chiefly among them that professors should stick to teaching and leave their personal politics at the door.
In an wonderful interview with Inside Higher Ed, Fish said that professors should focus on only two things: “(1) introduce students to bodies of knowledge and traditions of inquiry that had not previously been part of their experience; and (2) equip those same students with the analytical skills — of argument, statistical modeling, laboratory procedure — that will enable them to move confidently within those traditions and to engage in independent research after a course is over.”
Or put more simply: “Do your job, don’t try to do someone else’s job and don’t let anyone else do your job. And I think that if we as instructors … would adhere to that mantra, we would be more responsible in the prosecution of our task and less vulnerable to the criticisms of those who would want to either undermine or control us.”
Fish cites former academics like Ward Churchill and former Harvard president Larry Summers as two examples of academics who let politics or personal stances and beliefs sneak their way into the lecture hall or classroom.
As for Fish, pointing out his personal beliefs and trying to figure what sort of ideology inspired the writing of his book is like trying to nail jello to a wall. He spent most of his life in academia, which leads one to believe he might lean to the left. However, Inside Higher Ed mentions that Fish’s editor described him as a “curmudgeonly semiconservative guy.” And there’s always the New Criticism thing as well.
Anyway, I’d recommend Fish’s Times columns to anyone interested in an intellectual debate on the most touchy issues in academe. (The comments almost always number in the hundreds, and are almost as enjoyable to read as well.) I’ll see if I can track down a copy of the book and report back.
Ann Arbor bars receive mixed marks on latest health inspections
By Andy Kroll, written on Jun. 29, 2008
A number of popular campus bars throughout Ann Arbor have had their 2008 health inspections from Washtenaw County’s Environmental Health department and the results for these campus haunts have been mixed.
BTB Cantina, Conor O’Neill’s pub, Necto and Rush Street were among the most cited of the more than 10 local bars that had undergone inspections by the county so far this year.
Conor O’Neill’s, Necto and Rush Street were all cited for having facilities that were in disrepair, such as floor tiling in need of immediate replacement. For Necto and Rush Street, citations for disrepair have become as recurring theme, as Necto was cited by the county in November of 2006 and October of 2007 for subpar facilities. Rush Street was previously cited in August of 2007.
Health inspection reports listed pest problems at both Conor O’Neill’s (dead cockroaches in the kitchen) and Necto (flies in several bars, restrooms and in bottles of opened liquor). Necto was also cited for pest control problems in the club’s previous inspection report in October of 2007.
Health inspectors also cited the relatively new BTB Cantina for unsanitary dishwashing practices in the kitchen and by the Cantina’s cooks. The bar’s latest report also stated there were uncovered and exposed containers of food in storage, among other citations.
For access to Washtenaw County’s public health inspection database for restaurants, click here.
My liberal arts degree is worth how little?
By Andy Kroll, written on Jun. 27, 2008
A recently departed Education Department official fired a parting shot at her former employer, saying the department is controlled by advisers who don’t care about the liberal arts and instead judge colleges on their ability to produce students who can get out into the world and…well, produce.
Diane Auer Jones, the department’s former assistant secretary for postsecondary education, told the Chronicle of Higher Education this week that her departure “reflected the intensity of the Education Department’s internal and external battles to force colleges to do a better job of proving the value they provide to their students and the taxpayers who finance their operations.”
Alas, we find ourselves back at the question of how to quantify and put a value on a liberal arts degree—a degree in English or Art History or American studies (my major) or History, among many, many others—a task much harder to do than for a degree in, say, economics or business administration.
As the Chronicle reports, the Education Department has recently developed new standards for college accreditors, which the colleges themselves have to meet in order to maintain federal recognition and so their students can be eligible to receive federal aid. Which basically means that the Education Department wants colleges to show greater proof of student achievement.
And while it may be easy to prove student achievement with students’s grades and graduation rates, liberal arts accreditors like the American Academy for Liberal Education—which accredits a number of private, religiously affiliated liberal arts colleges and tries to measure more than just test scores and graduation rates when accrediting its schools—have felt the Ed. Dept.’s wrath.
Jones told the Chronicle that the AALE is being penalized “because department officials don’t sufficiently appreciate the academy’s efforts to verify quality outside of objective measures such as graduation rates or test scores.” So an attempt by a liberal arts accrediting agency to rightly measure more than cold, hard statistics goes punished.
The Ed. Dept.’s penalization of the AALE “was really the essence of what I saw as a misguided attempt to really narrow the focus of higher education and to almost vocationalize all of higher education,” Jones said.
Not that higher education isn’t slouching towards vocationalization anyway.
A couple weeks ago, a perky little press release turned up in my inbox from the folks at collegegrads.com. The release had a list of the “Top Entry Level Majors Announced for 2008 College Grads”—and not surprisingly, liberal arts were absent from the top of the list.
The top five majors were as follows:
- Accounting – 23%
- All Engineering – 13%
- Marketing – 11%
- Computer Science – 10%
- Business Administration – 9%
(The complete list can be found here.)
According to the site, liberal arts comprised only 2.75% of the top entry level majors, and journalism (gulp) only 0.36%. But at least it beat out Zoology (0.06%)!
Then again, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the liberal arts are so far down the list when the top entry level employer for 2008 was Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
SOLE hosts ‘Behind the Label’ labor rights discussion
By Andy Kroll, written on Mar. 24, 2008
By Geoffrey Gaurano
Daily Staff Reporter
Speaking in front of about 80 students and faculty members Friday, two former Dominican sweatshop workers criticized the lack of labor standards and abundance of corruption in factory work.
Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality, the campus labor rights group better known as SOLE, hosted Julio Castillo and Manuel Pujols to discuss the violations and exploitations of factory laborers around the world. Prior to Castillo and Pujols’s talk, SOLE members addressed those in attendance, explaining the University’s practice of using sweatshops to produce University-logo shirts.
The group urged students to pressure the administration to switch to “Fair Tees,” which are shirts made in factories with ethical labor practices.
Castillo and Pujols, two factory workers from the TOS Dominicana factory, which is owned by Hanesbrands Inc., spoke about the unfair treatment they’ve received from factory managers and also from Hanesbrands Inc.
“The truth about Hanes is that they claim to respect worker’s rights, but it’s untrue,” Castillo said.
Both Castillo and Pujols reported unfair treatment from their management, including breaching of their labor contracts. They said workers there are forced to work more hours, aren’t paid on time and are paid less than what is agreed upon.
Pujols said the TOS Dominicana factory forces employees to work 12-hour shifts, even though Dominican labor laws don’t allow normal workdays to exceed eight hours. Pujols added that with no paid overtime, lower than agreed upon wages and no benefits, the factory owed workers more than $850,000 in American dollars.
Castillo also said that the factory’s unsafe working environment and materials cause severe respiratory, lung and other health problems for workers.
He claimed the factory’s enclosed spaces and loud machinery have damaged his hearing and that he needs reconstructive eardrum surgery.
The surgery, which will not be covered by his health insurance, is too expensive for Castillo to afford.
“Money does not even cover what is needed to provide for a family,” he said.
Pujols described tactics including bribery, illegal firing, installation of cameras and constant harassment, being used by factory management to stop the formation and continuation of the unions.
“We feel threatened, discriminated and persecuted,” Pujols said.
The factory’s problems prompted Castillo and Pujols to start two unions and stand up for the workers. Castillo said the factory has refused to unionize so far.
United Students Against Sweatshops, a national student labor rights group, sponsored Castillo and Pujols’s visit to the University, which was one stop on a 14-day tour of universities and high schools throughout the country
LSA junior Blase Kearney, a member of SOLE, said companies often decrease production levels at unionized factories, which means sweatshops often try to prevent the workers from organizing in order to maintain production levels.
He explained that unions would increase workers’ wages, causing profit margins for companies to decrease. The companies, he said, would then “cut and run,” pulling their orders and taking them elsewhere.
Kearney said this was how most University apparel was being manufactured, and that even though the University has codes of conduct for labor, which prevents production from taking place in sweatshops, it isn’t being honored.
While the University is looking for alternatives, SOLE is pushing for the University to endorse the Designated Suppliers Program, which would have licensees source university logo apparel from predetermined factories that comply and respect the rights of their employees. Pre-written letters that contained this information were distributed to the audience to be signed, and will also be given to University President Mary Sue Coleman.
The University has so far rejected endorsing the DSP. Coleman’s Advisory Committee on Labor Standards and Human Rights recommended in April 2006 that the University not endorse the program, citing the untried nature of the program, the potential negative consequences of implementing the program and negative impacts on workers not in “designated factories.”
LSA senior Aria Everts, a SOLE member, said the event was very encouraging because of the high attendance.
“It was great to bring an understanding of what workers really face, especially since these students have probably never talked to a sweatshop worker before,” she said.