So UNM is going to pay probably half a million dollars to make a failed coach go away and more resources will be wasted to replace him in a job that is really not related to the mission of higher education, but one more appropriate to high school cheerleading? And the regents are going to spend thousands more to replace a president who probably sees the mess in the state and wants out. You can't blame him, but remember how much money was quietly given the last president to leave?
And the bank-run regents have talked of taking over the management of the obsolete nuclear weapons lab down the street? What an exercise in creative imagination to think adding a weapons of mass destruction center to the function of a center for individual higher education will solve any of our problems.
All this waste when the medical center, which should be run as a separate state hospital, is draining millions of dollars and hours of time from the University and the defunct high technology park remains a burden on the campus academic budget.
The Legislature and regents say they don't have enough money for staff or faculty salaries or to hire more academic faculty to teach the hundreds turned away each semester! In fact, many staff will take a pay cut, like the state schoolteachers already, if this keeps going, and good faculty will leave for better-run schools elsewhere.
It is enough to make one wonder what the hell is going on at UNM?
Poor students will be hit soon with another tuition increase to make up for this overall failed system. They should be getting upset, something sure is not working here. Part of the solution is for the staff and faculty to get together with the students and demand a democratic-based role in running the Board of Regents. Why, the Legislature long ago passed the blame for their inability to fund education onto the governor who has taken a walk on us all. They toss education around like a football and our traditional political system has failed us. We at the grassroots are being called on for new ideas.
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What we are seeing is the long-term renovation of higher and lower public education, which started as a result of social and economic factors related to the Vietnam War era.
What has evolved to replace public education is the war and profit agenda of bankers and militarist. As a result, our schools are being run as vocation centers on the factory-type business for profit model. If it was not clear that this was not appropriate before, we now have the bright shinning example of Enron and Arthur Andersen to see that putting private greed ahead of public interest is a failed methodology.
My word to the concerned on campus is to get organized - we are being Enronized.
Robert Anderson
American Studies instructor
