The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Quote from: AmLitHist on Today at 06:10:31 AM[. . .]

The running joke among long-time faculty here is to reminisce about the truly wonderful food we used to get at every event--even things like academic council meetings:  in-house gourmet cookies, taco bars and salad bars, gourmet sandwiches etc.  Nowadays we're lucky if we get warm tap water and a package of stale saltines. (We usually don't get anything.)

Spork Snack Index: University quality is indicated by its snacks.

I knew my employer was headed for eventual extinction when post-event snacks consisted of some store-bought cookies set on a table at the end of a hallway -- which had been designated the reception venue on very short notice.

cathwen, I remembered pfft and a couple of other words from previous puzzles.

Most of the students in the city, unlike their rich counterparts in institutions such as Columbia or NYU do not have the luxury of protesting or setting up tent encampments on campus as they are juggling jobs and their course work. Protests are seen as disruptive to their education as they interfere with the students' access to classrooms, libraries, and also dorms and dining rooms in some instances, but also prevent them from benefiting from the expensive tuition that they or their parents have paid the school. Many of the students I know don't have the income or the time to buy tents, get their food delivered, or spend days and nights living in tents or buildings on campus. Most of the protesters arrested at City College were outsiders.

QuoteNew York Police Department leaders and Mayor Eric Adams have blamed much of the disturbance at protests on "outside agitators," people with no connection to the colleges at which they are held. Mr. Boudreau also agreed with this sentiment. Protesters countered that many are students, alumni and members of the staff or the faculty of the City University of New York system, where City College is the flagship institution.

Among those taken to jail was Achmat Akkad, who lives in Harlem and is a graduate student at John Jay College, another CUNY institution. He learned about the demonstrations at City College from a post on the social media app X at 9:46 p.m. by the activist group Within Our Lifetime, which read in part: "Brave protesters are digging in and surrounded by NYPD. WE NEED BODIES AND NUMBERS AT CCNY RIGHT NOW."

"I literally just finished dinner and walked across the street," Mr. Akkad said. "Calling people 'outside agitators' makes it sound like Palestinians from Gaza came here to start an uprising." Mr. Akkad said he had been standing outside the campus when he was tackled and handcuffed. He was given a summons for disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor.

Most of the campus is open to the surrounding neighborhood, and demonstrators were free to wander among its buildings for days. But by Tuesday afternoon, with most student protesters camped in the heart of campus, City College security officers had erected barriers at nearby intersections and sidewalks, Mr. Boudreau said, sealing off the quad. Anyone who wished to leave was escorted out, he added.
The encampment was mostly quiet until Tuesday evening, when about 300 other pro-Palestinian demonstrators arrived from outside the campus, followed by dozens of police officers. The two groups of protesters, separated by temporary barriers with a line of police officers between them, fed off each other. At one point in the evening, some protesters lit road flares, their red sparks and flames licking the underside of a City College archway.

"If these were our students, they never would have done that," Mr. Boudreau said of the flares. "We have a tradition of managing protests in a way that allows protesters to have full freedom to express themselves and exert pressure on us, the administration."

Also on Tuesday evening, protesters inside the campus sprinted away from the barricades and broke into an administration building, where they smashed computers in the student financial aid office, Mr. Boudreau said. The protesters tried to barricade themselves inside the building but were removed by campus security officers after about 10 minutes.

Of the 31 people arrested inside the administration building, one was a faculty member at the college, and another was a student, Mr. Boudreau said. The rest had no known connection to the college. (Prosecutors charged only 22 people in connection with the break-in, but it was not clear from court records how many were affiliated with the college; the reason for the discrepancy was not clear.)

"I'm very glad that they were not students at City, because that means they won't be suspended, thrown out or put in jail," said Ms. Wallace, the emeritus English professor. "That's the best news I've heard all day."

The protestors appear to be a small fraction of the enrolled students. During the graduation ceremonies at NYU, only a dozen or so were disruptive as opposed to the majority who just wanted to be a part of the commencement.

These protests have had no impact on the situation in Gaza. Protesting in front of the offices of the governor, who rushed to Israel to show her support, or the senator, also a staunch supporter of Israel would have been much more effective.

Good morning!

QBwH for pfft (really?) and pitfall. Genius with all three pangrams today, a bunch of words left.

LB: Langue_doc, I agree about yesterday's solution. I had hypertext, but it never would have occurred to me to consider omigosh a word, even if I had seen it. Needless to say, I did not find a 2fer yesterday.

Happy puzzling!

Itching to spend all my time in the garden including finishing transplanting all my starts outside, but work has been preventing me alas. Plotting to maybe take half a day tomorrow for the garden since I'm losing Sunday to commencement.

Good morning!

Pangrams and above genius. That's it for today--some of the puzzles are meant for people with oodles of time and plenty of hired help rather than us mere mortals. Last word yesterday was pliant.

Just saw the solution to yesterday's LB. WTF?!

Happy solving!

Quote from: secundem_artem on May 15, 2024, 02:35:40 PMI've posted it in another thread, but 1-2 year's salary?  What Daddy Warbucks College are you folks working at?  In the past, Artem U has offered a bag of chips.  And if you really complain, they'll throw in a pack of gum. Seriously, the crap offers they've made to date would only be of interest to those given a terminal diagnosis by their physician with a 3 month life expectancy.

I fear this might be the level of our next buyout offer!

The running joke among long-time faculty here is to reminisce about the truly wonderful food we used to get at every event--even things like academic council meetings:  in-house gourmet cookies, taco bars and salad bars, gourmet sandwiches etc.  Nowadays we're lucky if we get warm tap water and a package of stale saltines. (We usually don't get anything.)

I finished planting my 4 hanging baskets and 2 whiskey barrels on the front porch, and the flower boxes on our little back patio yesterday evening. They look nice!

Quote from: jimbogumbo on May 15, 2024, 03:20:11 PMOf course police should be called in when things are actually violent (UCLA) or a building is actually occupied (Portland State).

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Not trespassing, and definitely not violent in the vast majority of instances. I think you (maybe) just don't like The Guardian.

Given that on many campuses, students (and some faculty) have vociferously opposed certain speakers merely giving a talk in some room on campus (on the grounds of it making campus "unsafe") , to the point where the event had to be cancelled, it's ironic that these same people see big crowds yelling in public spaces on campus as not at all a concern for making campus "unsafe".

The inconsistency is breathtaking.

Every few years my employer issues an early retirement offer in the form of "Up to X faculty members with Y years of service get Z times their salary if they leave." X is always less than 10. Z tops out at 1. Y is usually something like 25.

Quote from: bio-nonymous on May 14, 2024, 07:32:08 AM[. . .]

the department where someone takes that option would lose that faculty line! So, it kind of screwed your colleagues over.

[. . .]

The situation of former colleagues should not be one's concern. The faculty line will not reappear because you've worked until you've dropped dead in your office at age 93.