A decade ago, Tennessee made community college free. Yet fewer and fewer young people there go to College. This is what an economist would predict because making a signal cheaper means it can't serve a screening function and this is 'common knowledge' even for the poor and disadvantaged.
A different, but more fundamental problem, is that Professors are increasingly perceived as losers with either low IQs or complex behavioural problems. The fact that many such chronically shit out tedious, paranoid, tomes compounds the problem.
Take Dr. Rose Casey, who is writing a book called ' Aesthetic Impropriety: Property Law and Postcolonial Style, which shows how postcolonial Anglophone writers challenge the version of property law that had been imposed by colonial Britain and instead develop more just modes of collective being.
No postcolonial Anglophone writer has challenged any version of property law. Ngugi switched to writing in Kikuyu but he wasn't challenging anything 'imposed by colonial Britain'. He was challenging Kenyatta and his merry crew. But Ngugi knew nothing about the law. There was little point mastering its intricacies if the thing wasn't actually implemented.
In Nigeria, India, South Africa, and the Black Atlantic, writers have formally restructured existing legal ideas through their aesthetic style and formal experimentation.
No they haven't. There were no existing legal ideas. In the past there was the notion that if you had the muscle power to take and keep land or other assets, then it was worthwhile to pay some money to get a judgment affirming your legal title. True, you could get or retain such title in the hope that at the time of property transfer, you would be paid a little money so that the buyer got a clean title. But the game was seldom worth the candle. This was a sorry story and there was little point trying to write a Jarndyce v Jarndyce type novel precisely because, unlike Dickens's England, reform of the Judiciary wasn't possible. Possession, which is nine points of the law, could be affected by organs of the State- but Judges had little role.
By revealing that literary challenges to Anglo-American property jurisprudence synchronize with vanguard legal movements, such as South Africa’s recent steps toward decolonizing intellectual property law, I argue that literature can help change the legal realities of our present.'
Intellectual property law in South Africa is not colonial. All relevant statutes date from after it became a Dominion, or, later, a Republic. Apartheid South Africa was colonial only in the sense that Jim Crow America was- i.e. it wasn't at all.
Rose Casey, it seems, is writing ignorant nonsense.
As a professor, I teach classes to undergraduates and graduate students that place our contemporary moment in a global context.
But Rose doesn't know shit about either what is happening now nor that the 'global context' is one where America is declining relative to China. Her students are being brainwashed by a self-important cretin.
My courses typically bring together formal literary analysis
which she is too stupid to do
with postcolonial studies,
which is utter shit
transnational feminism,
stuff like the American Army enabling Afghan girls to go to school?
and law and the humanities to show how writers not only address pressing contemporary issues but also engage in transforming them, too.
Film makers- sure. My native Tamil Nadu has been run by people from the film industry for more than five decades. A popular comedian can be important- look at Zelensky- but 'post colonial' writers tend to live in the West and are not read by their own people. On the other hand, Ngugi's ranting did find a market in Zimbabwe- which is why the place has turned to shit.
I am actively involved in working toward racial justice and gender equity in both academia and my local community.
Rose isn't actively involved in shit. She and two other Assistant Professors at West Virginia State have written an open letter, protesting further cuts, which speaks of the
transfer (of) stolen Indigenous lands to white settlers,
Why not give it back? The First Nations could set up Casinos which might create jobs and have a multiplier effect favourable to State revenue.
WVU became one of many new colleges to enable non-elite white men to pursue degrees in agriculture, industry, and the liberal arts.
It enabled elite white men to do so more than proportionately.
The twentieth century saw the expansion of who the university served, as well as who it employed, when white women, Black men and women, international students, and working-class students—the sons and daughters of the state’s industrial workforce—gained access to higher learning.
Then, in some Departments, the lunatics took over the asylum and, at the margin, the place added negative value.
That project of racial and class equity is ongoing, nowhere near complete, and in peril. In the 1970s, on the heels of the expansion of the student body brought about by federal policy and social movements, access to state and federal funding began to decrease.
Because voters didn't want their tax dollars to be pissed against the wall.
Since then the cost of college has risen,
the opportunity cost has risen more save for utter cretins. But there are negative returns to higher education for the feeble minded or unemployable.
and student loan debt has ballooned.
This is a Ponzi scheme. It was bound to collapse.
Faculty governance has been consistently eroded, and the number, power, and pay scales of administrators have increased, a nationwide trend.
Because decent people prefer to administer crazy rather than do crazy.
Debates ensued about the purpose and meaning of higher education,
they were otiose. Higher education is about much higher future earnings and thus much higher future tax revenue. It isn't about pretending to battle sexual or racial inequality.
especially in a poor state in need of economic development.
Which won't occur if you indoctrinate cretins in stupid shite.
As historian Ronald L. Lewis documents in his history of WVU, the last thirty years have been dominated by two, often contradictory, developments: an emphasis on knowledge production that serves the people of the state and beyond, and the pressure to run more like a private business.
Google is a private business. It seems to be pretty good at 'knowledge production'. But it needs to do lay-offs and shut down non-performing departments same as its competitors. WVU simply wasn't ruthless enough, early enough. Still, it can turn things around by concentrating on core competencies.
At our present moment, this contradiction has grown into a full-blown crisis—and one not only about a budgetary issue, but about the meaning of public higher education across the United States.
A lot of it turned into meaningless shite or paranoid logorrhoea.
How do our colleagues, students, and community members define the crisis?
Stupidly. They are cretins.
We hear them speak of lost careers,
as what? Social Justice Warriors employed by the Galactic Federation?
community, and opportunities.
They could have learned how to fix air-conditioners or install solar panels.
They lament the destruction of pathways of learning for future generations of West Virginians,
But the internet provides better pathways.
whose lives are undoubtedly more capacious and interesting than we can foresee or fathom.
or fuck up utterly. Still, the fact is, if these guys couldn't foresee these cuts, they are too fucking stupid to foresee shit.
They mourn the potential loss
Everything can be potentially lost. No doubt, these guys spend their days in deep mourning for their own potential demise.
of programs that have enriched people’s lives at and beyond the university.
In which case, they will pay for it.
Those programs slated for cuts—and the relationships on which they are founded, the legacies they contain—are too numerous to list here. They entail everything from the deeply human traditions of making ceramics,
which has never involved going to university
speaking languages,
do it over the internet while commuting or baby-sitting or whatever.
nobody can fry a burger without a PhD
and studying advanced math concepts,
WVU is right to scrap the graduate math program because it simply can't attract kids smart enough to do advanced math as opposed to play with their own poo.
to programs that enrich our public life, like learning how to implement public policy
i.e. sacking useless people
and how to be stewards of our public parks and natural resources.
but sacking useless people.
As a land-grant university, WVU is required by federal law to undertake research, teaching, and outreach that supports our state’s natural resources, including livestock management, animal and nutritional sciences, outdoor recreation and tourism, landscape architecture, environmental planning, horticulture, soil and water science, energy resources, and more.
So get your PhD while feeding chickens or sweeping the streets. Why pay people to do stuff like that when you can charge tuition fees to kids stupid enough to pay for the privilege?
As a flagship university, we preserve, safeguard, and grow the intellectual life of this state.
by culling cretinous courses
These two commitments are not at cross purposes. Resource management involves the liberal arts, because people—who must read, think, calculate, and communicate—make research-based decisions, using critical thinking, about how best to sustainably utilize our natural resources.
But, it turns out, these cretins are too stupid to do this. That is why they must be sacked. 'Intellectual life' requires an actual intellect. These dim bints have no such thing.
And the intellectual life of the state is also a resource, one of our most extensive and beneficial.
Sad that two Professors of English don't know what is wrong with that last sentence.
WVU’s twinned responsibilities as both a flagship and a land-grant university make it possible to train our state’s teachers, from early childhood through high school.
No. Having a responsibility for a thing does not by itself make it possible to do that thing. A University can't train people in early childhood. A nursery school and then a primary school is needed. It is another matter that a University may also have a Teacher Training College whose students spend some time in the class-room.
Why can't these three dim bints, native English speakers all, not write a sensible sentence?
West Virginia already has a teacher shortage of 1,700 educators; what will happen in future years without graduate math,
nothing. You only need a degree with a math component to teach High School Math.
world language,
there is no such thing. The world has many languages but there is no 'world language'. High Schools may teach one or two foreign languages. But hiring a native speaker of Spanish is easy.
arts, music, and more?
because what people with degrees in such stuff really want to teach in poor communities. The fact is semi-literate teacher aids will increasingly do the heavy lifting while qualified teachers spend more time on admin.
In their depth and breadth, our research and teaching have incalculable downstream effects.
These three cretins are simply regurgitating the warmed up sick my generation rejected in the late Seventies or early Eighties.
Our classrooms, labs, and offices, our conversations, our writing, and our speaking contribute to the university’s mission to “advance education, healthcare and prosperity for all.”
But they cost too much and are a bit shit.
From increasing access to physical activity
which can only be done as part of a PhD program- right? It's not like people can't just go for a jog or play a game of tennis by themselves.
which is remunerative. Cut back on stupid shit so you can hire the top guys in that field.
why not let them train somewhere less shite?
why not teach them how to fart?
which is better done by disabled veteran lawyers
to identifying new pharmaceutical possibilities through studying fungi,
taking shrooms is part of the whole College experience. But it can also be part of the being a male prostitute experience.
to recording Appalachia’s formal economic, activist, and folk histories,
which can be done by retired male prostitutes
this links to a book written by a gorgeous African-American lady who went to Yale.
that honor the voices of this place:
why appoint a professor to babble paranoid shite when a retired male prostitute who hears voices will do it for free?
this is WVU’s work. And West Virginians deserve to learn about ideas that reach well beyond our state—whether Aristotle’s logic,
which is shit. Why not learn something more up to date?
fashion design, or media studies
which is better done somewhere less rural
—because everyone deserves a doorway to the whole world.
That's the internet
WVU reaches people across our entire state in ways and to extents that no one can measure but that we can all value.
Which is why voters won't be fooled into funding it.
The proposed cuts will cause irreparable harm to our state’s economic, cultural, and intellectual ecology.
It will make no fucking difference. That's why the State's credit rating hasn't been reduced. The truth is shutting down shitty Colleges is a good thing.
University administrators say that it’s time to transform WVU into a more efficient university. We’re not opposed to change, but we strongly object to the process to date and we object to the reduction of education to cold market logic.
Which is why they are happy to teach for free.
WVU and its consultants have not consistently offered accurate numbers when identifying departments under review, but even if they had, can numbers ever measure the value of the thousands-year-old tradition of making ceramics?
Either people will pay for pots or they won't. It isn't really true that making pots will enable you to have sex with the ghost of Patrick Swayze.
Of connecting with people in the past and future through the language of mathematics?
Learning calculus helps you talk dirty to Patrick Swayze's ghost- right? I mean, why else would Terence Tao bother with it?
Of fostering the effervescent feeling of solving a problem with one’s community, or communicating with people around the world?
These guys don't get that you can have effervescent feelings or can talk dirty to Patrick Swayze's ghost without being paid to teach shit or having to pay money to shitheads in return for a credential.
Ultimately, we understand the public university as a space to nurture a democratizing vision of the present and the future that builds on our rich history.
The agora, not the academy, is such a space. In a Democracy, the agora won't tax itself to subsidize feeble minded academics.
Faculty recognize that the public university is a space of shared decision making and robust community.
That's a kibbutz. A university is a place where smart people get smarter and then make lots of money and pay lots in tax.
Yesterday faculty convened a full assembly and passed a resolution of no confidence in both our leadership and this process by a landslide: 89 percent and 90 percent, respectively.
Hopefully, those cretins will resign.
Students, too, see WVU as their own institution and one they hold in trust for future students—and this was on full display during recent student protests.
Did they protest against being stupid?
In this moment of crisis for the public university, we all see a moment of powerful opportunity: to recommit to the public university as a space of accessible, inclusive, and sustainable growth.
These are native English speakers with PhDs in Literature of History. Why is it that the above sounds like it was written by 12 years old at my old school in New Delhi? The fact is a university can't grow spatially very much. This is because real estate is scarce. It can grow in terms of the number or services it provides and the number of people willing to pay for those services. But it has to compete with what is available for free on the internet. That's where these cretins fall down.
We thus call on the Board of Governors to engage in good faith
with whom?
and freeze this process, which has excluded most of WVU’s stakeholders from meaningful participation, is opposed by many students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members, and has already caused severe damage.
because people are no longer able to have sex with the ghost of Patrick Swayze while making pottery.
We—the people of WVU—have been sourcing, discussing, and analyzing data together; we have been cooperating, proposing, and voting together; we have been protesting, speaking, and writing together.
But the result is semi-literate shite like this.
We now ask the Board to commit to working with students, faculty, and staff to develop a new model for the future of West Virginia University based on democratic principles of true shared governance.
Sadly, the democratic principle that voters get to stop funding stupid shite has prevailed.
At this point, neither President E. Gordon Gee nor the process of so-called “academic transformation” serves the best interests of the university or the state.
Because the university is a space where people can take a dump. Academic transformation will cause billions of people to no longer have any place to take a dump. Indeed, lacking proper instruction and emotional support, many future residents of West Virginia may lose the ability to defecate.
There’s still time to recognize our duty to the West Virginia public that employs us and whom we serve. What’s more, we can provide an inspirational model for other university administrations: we can commit to preserving and enhancing access to the university as a public good in the fullest sense.
More particularly in the sense of being a place where all can unite to take a dump together.
We stand ready to do this work for the people of West Virginia today and tomorrow—work that can and should be done together.
A people who shit together can work together to ensure that the space in which that shitting occurs grows sustainably by including more and more shitty subjects of study.
Signed,
Rose Casey
Assistant Professor of English
Jessica Wilkerson
Associate Professor of History
Johanna Winant
Assistant Professor of English
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