16 thoughts on “SL 697”

  1. Iowahawk tweeted:

    “Fun facts: @HarveyWeinstein has a Twitter account. He has never tweeted. He follows no one. He has 10k followers desperate for a meeting.”

    “That’s why he was able to get away with his act for 40 years. If you want a laugh, look through his Hollywood B-list of twitter followers.”

    “If Hollywood is a high school, he’s the fat ugly rapist kid with a beer-filled mansion whose dad owns the town factory where your dad works”

    “Well I guess there goes my development deal at Miramax”

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  2. Weinstein is a pig and has always been a pig. No one gave a crap until now and/or his power was too great for anyone to challenge him.

    I read a lot of gossip, partially because I’m nosy, partially because I want to understand the industry. And basically, Hollywood is a freaking horror show for women. I have students now who are media studies majors and want to go into the business, and it’s all I can do to keep from screaming NOOOOO. I mean, I get the desire to work in the business. I just hate to see students I care about go into a business that will suck the soul out of you and/or subject you to emotional and sexual abuse (particularly if you are a woman).

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      1. In an even more serious way, this happens (sometimes) to people like Ceausescu. One day, it stops working.

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  4. That article about professors as therapists really resonates with me right now. We have a new Dean who is pushing departments to do more about retention (never mind that our data suggest the one thing students really love on campus is the faculty; they hate so many other things like the dorms and the food that are completely beyond our control). When we pointed out to her that 1) most of our students aren’t leaving for academic reasons and 2) the non-academic reasons for why they are leaving are beyond our control and training, she responded that we should be doing more to solve their problems. Of course, this follows on the heels of the administration’s demand that we increase our tenure and promotion standards by requiring more research. She did not get why our department and departments across the college are so frustrated by her request. Look – we all want our students to succeed, but there are only so many hours in the day.

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    1. I could have written this exact same post – except the pressure comes less from our dean in particular and more from a flurry of other administrative folks. Just the fact that we have a student services hub (for freshman advising, writing help, etc.) called “Centre for Academic Excellence” ought to tell you something about the idea that some slogans and a little off-loading will do for a university. *headdesk*

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      1. We have something called the Student Accelerator. I’ve never been inside, but this isn’t Penn State so I assume they aren’t smashing students together at high speed.

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    2. Right now I’m sitting and waiting for a first-year student to come by and meet with me to check in. I volunteered to be a faculty mentor to 8 freshmen, in a program that they’ve developed because they can’t afford to/are too cheap to spend money on more academic advisors and RAs, so they want to farm it out to faculty.

      I’ve always worked closely with the freshmen in my own classes, and resisted signing up for this program because I think the focus should be on hiring trained people to do this work. But I gave in last year, after deciding that it was better for me to do this work than for nobody to do it. (I do get some merit-pay-points to do it – though it’s likely that our merit pay will disappear with the next contract and I serve on so many committees that I don’t need service points anyway.)

      It’s like everything else – the people who need it (like the student who was supposed to be here 15 minutes ago) don’t show up, and the people who don’t are diligent about their meetings. Maybe I catch one or two who’s somewhere the middle. Maybe.

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      1. We have a web-based app that basically encourages us to check up on students. We can “flag” them and an advisor will contact them. And we have a few points where we have to give progress reports. On the flip side, I can just input my availability and point students to a link on this system so they can make appointments with me online.

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  5. I followed the link in the adjunct article to the story about faculty who are being asked to volunteer to help students move into their dorms. I haven’t been in college for nearly 25 years. Has moving-in changed so much that it requires the aid of adults another than the ones who accompany the student? I understand this may be the vibe on certain small campuses, but is there a community-building aspect to this that’s outside my experience? Are there not enough employees to direct traffic and answer questions? Are administrators coaxing faculty into doing unpaid work they wouldn’t otherwise do?

    My alma mater has unpaid student volunteers who help other kids move in, but the university charges kids $25 for availing themselves of these volunteers. That just doesn’t seem right.

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    1. I helped my daughter move in and first, the whole thing was basically run by student volunteers, and second, other than that, I really wasn’t needed for anything more than moral support.

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    2. Jeff S. said,

      “I understand this may be the vibe on certain small campuses, but is there a community-building aspect to this that’s outside my experience?”

      Our campus does this (both faculty and older students) and my husband has successfully dodged it for years, but yes, I think that there is a community-building aspect to it.

      Mandatory would be dreadful, though.

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      1. I’ve helped out with move-in twice, but the idea is not that faculty and staff do heavy labor (the students and residential hall staff do that) – it’s community building. This year was boring, because I was at a table students had to stop by for just a minute, but the time before I was outside and chatting with family members who were dropping their kids off. I had a couple of great conversations with teary parents, and I think helped to reassure them their kids would be okay.

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  6. My two cents on Pioneer Woman….her husband’s family is one of the largest landowners in America (#17, according to Modern Farmer). I grew up around incredibly wealthy farmers and they are always looking for write-offs to help with the tax bill. I see the whole enterprise as a giant tax deduction for the family.

    Granted, they are adding back to the local economy by revitalizing their small community so good for them. But to think this all equals blogging success is ignoring several realities.

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