UIUC Lunacy
So I was watching the evening news last night (the local news not the network cult of Obama-worship propaganda machine) and there were three stories associated with our university that I found so paradoxical that; well you guys be the judge. Does this make sense to anyone?
First story: The university is projecting over a billion dollar shortfall in their budget. They are in the red by over a billion bucks! Not good. They cite budget trouble in Springfield, talk about probable tuition raises, cuts, etc.
Second story: The university is building trans-gender bathrooms on campus. How large a percentage of the student population are we catering to here? Now as you all know I am a pretty simple guy, but have we developed a third sex or something that I am unaware of? I really don’t get off the farm too often, but I thought that the way this thing worked was as follows:
- Approach a restroom.
- Look into your pants and determine the brand of tackle you are equipped with.
- Following this self-examination you make a decision as to the little boys room or the little girls room. There is no third choice.
Now if we were flush with money (bad pun) maybe ok, but we are a billion in the hole and are wasting money in the name of political correctness? Is this really a necessity?
There are certain compromises that society dictates that frankly we are stuck with. (like if you are a boy you go peepee in the boys room and if you are a girl you …..well you know.) The system has really worked pretty well since the creation of indoor plumbing if you think about it. I for one wish I could dress like a Spartan in the 300 (cool movie), flowing red cape and loin cloth, maybe strap AK-47s on my back, and partake in public fornication. Unfortunately, societal norms frown on this type of public interaction. Certainly my university does not fund the construction of special facilities to cater to my needs in this regard. Most unfair it now seems.
Third Story: Some University tenured professor feels the need to waste his tax-payer funded time applying for George Ryan to get a Nobel Peace prize for freeing all the murdering rapists (ok alleged murdering rapists – wait – Convicted murdering rapists) on Illinois’s death row. Again, call me simple, but I thought we paid our professors to do things like TEACH. If we are a billion in the hole and we have an overpaid liberal activist drawing professor pay – well I have a problem with this.
Summary: We are over a billion dollars short on the budget but we have monies to build transgender potties and to pay a guy to promote giving an award to a convict. Folks – something has got to give here. All this in a half hour news segment. It is just too much.
Comment by Joshua on 23 January 2009 at 9:06 am:
With a 1 billion dollar deficit I think the Board of Trustees should replace President White, Chancellor Herman, and cut the salaries of any administrator making over 150,000. What staggering mismanagement.
Comment by Joshua on 23 January 2009 at 9:21 am:
I suppose it’s worth addressing these:
1) This is pretty hard to believe. Lousy stewardship of the state’s flagship institution. See my previous comment, heads should roll.
2) Lets be clear about something. These aren’t special bathrooms for transgendered people. These are just bathrooms in a single small room, like the “family” bathrooms you see at a mall. Some students w/ disabilities benefit from this, other students would prefer the added privacy. Also, when a mom visits her daughter at the girls dorm, say she brings a young son who needs help going to the bathroom. Some girls showering in the main bathroom might not like having little boys running around while they are naked. These don’t add that much expense. To the best of my knowledge, they arent retrofitting at high cost, they are just planning smarter in the future. I could be wrong about this. There are much better examples of wasteful spending, like remodels of the administration buildings, I think the chancellor who makes over 400K in a community where most families live on 40K wanted a housing allowance.
3) It’s worth pointing out that Ryan commuted death sentences to life in prison, he didn’t just throw open the doors on deathrow. ragnar is a little misleading. And the Professor in question is a scholar who is highly thought of in many circles. Having controversial professors on both sides of the spectrum enriches academic life. He didn’t and doesn’t spend that much time advocating the prize for Ryan, and professors are allowed to do things other than teach. He also teaches, writes, and does other things expected of faculty members.
Comment by chrism on 23 January 2009 at 9:31 am:
“Having controversial professors on both sides of the spectrum enriches academic life.”
Joshua, don’t act like this is true at any more than 5% of the universities in this country.
Comment by Joshua on 23 January 2009 at 9:39 am:
Chris, I think this principle holds true at most universities, but it’s a question of degree, and often of approach. I really meant in the life of the student while at the academy, more than the lives of individual professors. But that can also be true, though probably not quite as often.
Comment by Brian Pierce on 23 January 2009 at 9:54 am:
“I really don’t get off the farm too often.”
That’s almost hard to believe, Ragnar.
Not that there’s anything wrong with staying on the farm. Your inability to pair your ignorance with a sense of humility, however, is what causes you so often to cross the line between being merely wrong and being a bad person. And I say this fully aware that you wrote this post wanting people to call you ignorant so as to reinforce the delusion that you are a tribune of red-blooded, plainspoken Americans everywhere. But I still feel the need to point out that there is of course nothing plainspoken or American about being mean-spirited and ugly. That’s just the refuge of the bully too gutless to confront the things that make him uncomfortable and make an honest effort to understand them.
If I’m wrong about that, here’s a wikipedia article that’s a good place to start to learn about what it means to be trangendered:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender
Comment by Joshua on 23 January 2009 at 10:05 am:
I think the 1 Billion figure Ragnar cited is way off. So I’d like to retract my response to his first point. Though I still think Herman and White should be replaced for many other reasons.
Comment by Mugsy on 23 January 2009 at 11:13 am:
“Having controversial professors on both sides of the spectrum enriches academic life.”
I was unaware that both sides of the spectrum were enriching the life at the University of Illinois. This is good news. I can remember the old days when Billy Joe Mills was trying to organize Liberal/Conservative debates and no professor would dare step forward to participate. Things must have changed. Perhaps a few Conservatives have slipped in under the fence. Most of them must be hiding in their burrows, afraid of being eaten by the dinosaurs.
I propose that we make Conservatives feel more comfortable on campus. To do this, we should get them their own bathrooms. A very small, one seat bathroom will suffice for now. We Conservatives do not like exposing ourselves to Liberals. You just never know who is peeking.
Comment by Joshua on 23 January 2009 at 11:24 am:
Ira Carmen enriched my experience at Illinois. More conservative academics would help the institution by facilitating more debate. Too bad its harder to find conservatives with PHDs. I wonder why that is?
Comment by RAGNAR on 23 January 2009 at 11:24 am:
Well Brian certainly got up on the wrong side of the tampon. Josh as to the budget I am just telling you what I saw on the news. I did find a source that said the university’s annual budget is over 4.2 billion so a 25% shortfall given our economic situation does not seem real out to lunch to me.
Comment by James Prescott on 23 January 2009 at 12:47 pm:
I don’t know about the billion dollar shortfall, etc., but I know one line item that law students find especially absurd is the addition of a series of flat screen tvs to the law building. These flat screens tell what classes/event are going on in each room when, upcoming events, etc. This would be great, except 1) its a pretty expensive end to solve a non-important problem and 2) they still print out pages, which are placed immediately below the flat screens, telling you what classes are going on in which classroom when, what events are upcoming etc.
Not entirely dispositive, but indicative of the type of university spending that makes people go “huh?”
Comment by Tom Trumpinski on 23 January 2009 at 3:51 pm:
The University of Illinois, in its present condition, is a fraud perpetrated on the children of the rich, lying to them by saying that it will, given exorbitant amounts of cash, provide them with a ticket so they will not have to get their hands dirty.
As many Millenials are now finding out, that ticket has been punched by the economic collapse and will be worth much less than they paid.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s time to close the doors, sell the buildings, and sow the intellectual ground with salt so that nothing similar ever grows back.
Comment by Segen on 23 January 2009 at 9:53 pm:
has anyone ever been in the old engineering and armory buildings? it is so hard to find a woman’s bathroom in those buildings because it was set-up mostly for men. the women’s bathrooms you do find are half urinals…half toilets.
i would love if they made all the bathrooms gender neutral so that you don’t have to search for bathrooms in poorly-planned buildings.
even for new construction, i don’t see the problem with having bathrooms that anyone can use. when i was in new york city, i came across dual-gender bathrooms quite frequently…makes peeing fair…everyone has to wait in the same line to use the facilities.
wait…maybe i change my mind…i just noticed that billy joe peed on my toilet seat when he was over visiting. wtf, billy? put the seat up…
Comment by Joshua on 23 January 2009 at 11:08 pm:
Segen, he’s just marking his territory :)