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How Green Is UVic?
There's no cause to brag. 'Knowledge has succumbed to power,' say authors of Planet U.
Change begins on campus.
- Planet U: Sustaining the World, Reinventing the University
- New Society (2005)
- Bookstore Finder
By Michael M'Gonigle's own assessment, he and co-author Justine Starke have written a utopian analysis of what the university might be -- as a learning institution, as a working environment and as a reflection of its surroundings. And like any utopian work, starting with Thomas More's original Utopia back in 1516, M'Gonigle and Starke's Planet U: Sustaining the World, Reinventing the University (New Society) is rooted in a deep frustration with how things actually are.
"I realized I couldn't keep hitting my head on the wall inside the building," says M'Gonigle, talking about the many on-campus battles that inspired the book. "We're talking about a social revolution the university should be leading, not dragging its heels on." In recent years the University of Victoria, where M'Gonigle is a professor and eco-research chair of environmental law and policy, had students sitting in trees in Cunningham woods to keep the institution from chopping down the last remnants of forest in the campus core. Those protests rolled into debates over the general campus plan, with M'Gonigle and others pushing the school to embrace making environmental considerations much more central to the overall planning process.
And while UVic made some changes to its plan, he says, it was only after a concerted push from students, faculty and others. "It's a bizarre world where people, even presidents at universities, have a wall around their brains," M'Gonigle says. Nor have his attempts to take down some of those walls been entirely welcomed. "I'm not popular with the senior administration."
'How we got shafted by UVic'
Should those senior administrators give Planet U a careful read, the book likely won't make M'Gonigle any more popular. While he and Starke have kept the book largely positive, offering a vision for how things could be improved at all universities, they also point out how much inertia there is in the structure of most schools and how UVic specifically has failed to take a lead in moving toward sustainability.
"We cannot have a sustainable world where universities promote unsustainability," they write. "But neither can we change the university without also changing the world; the two are entwined." In many ways the schools are a reflection of our society.
UVic sees itself as leading on sustainability issues, at least according to its soon-to-be-released Sustainability Report 2006, but according to Planet U the school often fails to live up to its own hype. The chapter on "social movement" in particular, says M'Gonigle, is about "how we got shafted by UVic." In it the authors describe how the university reacted to the Hanen Report, Planning Possibilities, that laid out suggestions from a high-level commission chaired by philosopher and former president of the University of Winnipeg, Marsha Hanen, for how the school could make its planning more participatory, with open elections of its members, open meetings and a new spirit of consultation. The administration paid lip service to the plan, they write, but in the end changed little.
"And so, after years of conflict, just as the university had come to the edge of taking a momentous step forward, the administration had pulled back, retrenched and politely engineered its own failure. Knowledge had succumbed to power," they write. "Excited at the potential of a reformed campus and, taking the university at its word, the protesters had let down their guard, and implementation had been turned over to the very operational department that was to be reformed. Quickly it was back to business as usual…. This conflict in a back room of the University Club was not just a small matter to them. It was a micro example of a macro problem where an institution cannot act, and therefore turns an opportunity for change into an exercise in public relations."
UVic: 'We strive to model sustainability'
Unfortunately, UVic president David Turpin is unavailable for comment. His assistant says he is away for all of July and unreachable. "Call UVic's public relations office," she adds.
But apparently, summer is not the best time for interviews. It turns out all the best people to talk with are away, says spokesperson Patty Pitts. On sustainability, she says there have been recent shifts in the facilities management, the department that develops, operates and maintains campus facilities, to embrace greener ways of doing things.
Changes were made to the campus plan while it was being developed, she says, that made many of the critics happy. There's now a moratorium on clearing woods in the campus core, for example, and there are efforts to protect and restore Garry oak meadows.
What's more, she says there's now transparency around the decisions to make any major changes to the campus, such as adding new buildings.
Pitts sends over a computer file of Sustainability Report 2006, the slick 10-page report to be printed on 30 per cent post-consumer recycled fibre, which details what the school is doing. "The concept of sustainability is not new to the University of Victoria," says the introduction. "While terms may evolve, our commitment to responsible resource use, protection of natural areas and a pedestrian oriented campus has been in place since the 1960s."
It continues: "At the University of Victoria we strive to model sustainability, applying ingenuity to find new and creative solutions and practices that can serve as examples for others…. Through our operations, UVic is demonstrating that incorporating sustainability into decision making makes good business sense."
The report even points to Planet U as one of nine highlights of sustainability research happening at the university.
Green ideas promoter
For her part, co-author Justine Starke says UVic bragging about a book that is critical of the school is ironic.
Describing the origins of Planet U, she says, "It very much came out of our engagement with UVic's planning process and our engagement with the community members who were vocal about what was happening at UVic."
Through that process some change happened, but there's still a ways to go. "UVic is not perfect, but it was definitely improved by the broad consultation that went into developing its 2003 campus plan," she says. "UVic's definitely challenged by the paradigm a lot of the upper administration is working in. It's a pretty conservative institution."
Starke recently left Victoria for Vancouver, where she'll work on a master's in community planning at the University of British Columbia.
One positive addition at UVic is the role Sarah Webb plays as the sustainability co-ordinator in the facilities management department. She's in a position to bring green ideas to the table and make sure alternatives are considered. She advances a lot of ideas like getting waterless urinals added to new buildings, but, says Starke, "She's a lone soldier up there."
Webb says she gets to work closely with people throughout the campus community and that positions like hers are relatively new. "Sustainability is such an opportunity for universities and colleges throughout North America and it will continue to grow and to build."
Toiling in 'silos'
Ultimately though, the school only has one person dedicated to sustainability. For comparison, Pitts confirms there are 11 people working in the public relations office, with a new position being added soon. Over in the development office, which works on fundraising from corporations, governments and individuals, there are at least 25 people.
But it's not necessarily fair to compare those numbers with Webb's small office, says Pitts. There are experts in sustainability working in economics, geography, engineering, business, environmental studies and biology, she says. There's the environmental law centre and M'Gonigle's own eco-research position. "It's difficult to say specifically how much resources UVic is putting towards sustainability," she says. "It really is throughout the whole infrastructure."
Yet even though all these things are happening at the university, it doesn't mean the in-house knowledge is applied to decisions. "That's a big problem with the university in general," says Starke. For the most part, she adds, you have people in all the different disciplines plugging away at their work in individual silos -- yet it doesn't have to be that way. "Sustainability is all about integrating ideas and working together...it's all about applying a holistic approach to everything you do."
M'Gonigle puts the problem with university administration this way: "They don't learn from their own teaching."
The authors also address this same question in the book. "At the university, the researcher delivers a lecture on the impacts of CO2 emissions on the global climate, then drives to the airport for the flight to the conference on atmospheric science," they write. "The school of health launches a study of teenager nutrition, while the cafeteria downstairs fast-fries chicken wings [from a thousand miles away] en route to a student's paper plate."
Instead of paying attention to the "ecology of everyday life," universities process students to have credentials for a job, yet they are not educated about the world. They quote Oberlin College environmental studies professor David Orr, who wrote, "The product of a university degree is a population trained in hypocrisy."
Universities: a history
Still, as the authors make clear in a section on the history of the institution, the university hasn't always been this way.
The first universities started with religious purposes, then evolved into modernist places where disciplines contributed to expanding knowledge and nation building. Later they morphed again into places supporting "economism" where the prime purpose was to create workers with credentials for an increasingly corporate world. Now, their main patrons -- corporations and governments -- push schools to become more commercial and to produce more research that will have a market.
As Starke and M'Gonigle put it in Planet U, "Every bit as much as Paris turned out good clerics, and Berlin good bridge builders, so Harvard and UVic turn out the 21st-century equivalent for the age of economism -- well-trained producers and well-socialized consumers." No doubt as fees climb higher -- and students take on more debt to cover them -- more and more of those consumers will be going through their studies with a clear idea of how they're going to make a buck and pay it all back when they're done.
Nor is there much room in such institutions for people who'd like the university to be something more, write the authors. "In this new university, dissent is a threat to fundraising and to good corporate relations."
Rabble rouser
One person who would agree with that sentiment is Ingmar Lee, who served for a year on UVic's board of governors as a student representative. Lee appears in Planet U as one of the core activists pushing UVic in recent years to set a greener example. (One of Briony Penn's tarot-inspired illustrations that appear throughout the book -- the rebel -- even looks strikingly like Lee.) In an e-mail from India, where he has lived for almost a year, Lee says he has yet to see a copy of Planet U. However, he says, "I can say that the UVic administration under president Turpin was a fat, impenetrable, pig-headed Ivory Tower of process and bureaucracy which was completely uninterested in taking even the most basic baby steps to green up the university."
He criticizes the school for "spewing pesticides," clearing forest for development -- despite having some 40 hectares of parking lot that could have been used for building -- and failing to reduce paper use. "These were all concerns not even worth considering to them," writes Lee. He recalls setting up a meeting with Turpin where he asked the president to set an example by insisting that his office use only 100 per cent post-consumer recycled paper.
Then he laid out a five-point plan that would have moved the campus towards reducing its paper use. "This was all too much for Turpin," continues Lee. "Nothing happened. Students continue to get stonewalled up there on the paper issue."
The only mention of paper in UVic's Sustainability Report 2006, by the way, is on the final page of the report which notes that almost one tree was saved by printing the document on 30 per cent post-consumer recycled fibre.
Lee says as far as he's aware, things aren't getting much better on the environmental front, and there seem to be few things the school responds to. "I tried everything possible, beginning with working politely through the due-process options, writing articles, getting involved in groups, getting elected to the [board of governors], non-violent civil disobedience, direct action and finally, the only thing that even began to get their attention, public humiliation." He concludes, "For us plebes, embarrassing them publicly, that's the only thing that worked as far as getting the attention of Turpin and the UVic administration went."
On the bright side
The book is not, however, all doom and gloom. The authors are optimistic that universities can change -- if there's the will to make that change. "When people wake up to what a university is, they'll say, 'Oh my god, this is such potential that we're wasting,'" says M'Gonigle. "It's an uphill battle, but if we can't do it in the universities, we can't do it on the planet," he adds.
But M'Gonigle insists the goal of Planet U is more than just getting a few green buildings built. "Its goal is to change the discussion, to raise the bar to make people think much more comprehensively."
Or, as Starke says, "I hope the book serves its purpose in inspiring a new social movement to recognize the university as a catalyst for change."
Instead of reflecting a consumer, growth-driven culture, a more utopian vision of universities is that they will point the way toward a sustainable future, where local places are valued and treated with care. Clearly, that's a vision that would be good for all of us.
Andrew MacLeod is a staff reporter for Victoria's Monday Magazine, where this piece originally appeared. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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40
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nightbloom
5 years ago
Comments on "How Green Is UVic?"
Consultation in a university environment can only be taken so far. It sounds democratic on the face of it, but the consultation process invariably becomes a foil for organized special interests...many of them quite eclectic, and not a few of those organized interests are led by the certifiably insane. Faculty members with hippy pretentions, large student followings and an axe to grind with "the administration" are to be approached with caution. Sustainability is great, but bear in mind that universities are not co-operatives, nor utopias, nor are they democracies...and they must operate within the same framework of basic realities as the rest of the world.
RickW
5 years ago
"...and they must operate within the same framework of basic realities as the rest of the world."
Definitely not! Untiversities must necessarily EXCEED and surpass the banalities that constrain the rest of us. Otherwise, they are just trade schools.
stan
5 years ago
"Otherwise, they are just trade schools."
RickW...the only thing universities care about is $$$. Anything else is just window dressing.
Jeffrey J.
5 years ago
Clearly written, insightful, wonderful analysis. To be followed by the denigrating posting by 'nightbloom' points to the endemic misery which propels modern decision makers. Congrats to Andrew McLeod, authors M'Conigle and Stark, and all those with vision and energy to try and introduce postive change. Whether it be private sector or public sector organiztions, they each foster a form of blind bureaucracy peopled by individuals incapable of thinking creatively.
freebear
5 years ago
I went to the University of Calgary for my Master in Environmental Design-Planning (96-98). That University and even Faculty is no different. I worked on a summer project developing a design/plan for university lands and their development. Sustainability is not being taken seriously, its only a discussion, with no application (especially in oil & gas dominated Alberta), especially at the university.
Our plan/design called for using the vast parking areas for the site of development, rather than natural prairie grass (fescue) areas and woodlands.
Sustainability-a tenured professor drives a smart car or a hybrid car. That's about it! Why would they actually implement programs that use less oil or gas-Alberta's lifeblood!
Susainability will come when we no longer can live our unsustainable lives-when the fuel runs out and/or we can no longer afford the price at the pump.
Steve P
5 years ago
"The product of a university degree is a population trained in hypocrisy"
Although it can feel this way, I think this criticism is a little harsh.
The gulf between ideal and the actual is part of the human condition. To expect a huge bureaucracy to transform immediately based on a currently-popular social movement is not realistic. Over time, values and structures can change.
Looking to public process to champion sustainability can backfire, because it assumes the majority of people involved in the planning process value a particular conception of sustainability. People have many different approaches to sustainability (if they value it at all), partly shaped by their interests. Anyone who doubts this should consider trying to champion a new group home in a single family neighbourhood -- they'll find out really quickly just how much the general public values sustainability when it is to be implemented in their back yard. There needs to be a balance between technocratic analysis and public process.
Another difficulty with public process at a University is the question of whom to consult. The faculty? Students, who are only temporary users of the University space? Adjacent residents, who may never use the University facilities? Other taxpayers, who may resent doubling construction costs to pay for innovative green infrastructure and buildings? When values conflict between these groups, how does one sort it out? My point here is not that consultation is impossible; rather, that it is not a simple matter of opening the gates to the people and hearing them roar in support for sustainability.
skeptikool
5 years ago
The problems certainlly are not confined to UVic. It wasn't too long ago that controversy hit the front pages re: the condition of water fountains dispensing city water and the promotion of bottled water and pop etc. from vending machines. This concerned the University of BC. Funding had, of course, raised its ugly head.
The idea of waterless urinals is excellent. I've been using them for years. I just don't flush when I pee.
nightbloom
5 years ago
Jeffrey J. said: "To be followed by the denigrating posting by 'nightbloom' points to the endemic misery which propels modern decision makers."
- endemic misery - that's cute. And I wasn't "denigrating" the article, I was being faithful to my own observations and experiences as a participant in public consultations on university planning & development proposals (in which discussions concerning 'sustainability' played a significant part). The consultation process has limits. Ever been to Berkley, JJ? That'll demononstrate the stark reality of the limits of public consultation in an environment prone to radicalization. UBC was bombarded with similar flak at every step of its recent campus development.
The most vocal organized interests in and around any healthy university campus are occasionally visionary, often juvenile, always volatile and (as I said) not infrequently stark raving mad ;-)
steveoverhere
5 years ago
"Definitely not! Untiversities must necessarily EXCEED and surpass the banalities that constrain the rest of us. Otherwise, they are just trade schools."
Not that there really is anything wrong with a well rounded academic education but....what this province, indeed the whole country, really needs is more trade schools. We graduate thousands of people who are well trained to do nothing but go back to school and get even more training. In ten years, you will not be able to get your car or your plumbing fixed. You will however, be able to have a social worker talk you through your depression while you wait.
I see nothing wrong with a little radicalism while youre away at school, in fact, it's probably good for you. As long as you don't confuse it with what happens in reality.
freebear
5 years ago
"In ten years, you will not be able to get your car or your plumbing fixed. You will however, be able to have a social worker talk you through your depression while you wait. "
Do you really think we will be able to afford to fuel our vehicles in 10 years?!!!
Talk about sustainability! Sustainable internal combustion engines-I don't think so!
steveoverhere
5 years ago
It was a for-instance example, if its suits you better lets try getting your plumbing or your house wiring or your energy efficient windows installed, or an R2000 compliant house framed or your energy efficient furnace installed.
Sustainable enough?
freebear
5 years ago
Hey Steve:
Apologies, I am cranky with the "consume at all costs" bunch!
We all can not be experts at everything. Then again at one time people were generalists and could construct a house, farm, hunt, fix equipment, patch up a wound, and so on.
A university should be a place to discuss where 'we' are going, how 'we' are going to get there, and whether it is a good idea to go in that direction. Of course this kind of discourse should take place outside the university, but how often does that occur?
Robinhoody
5 years ago
"We graduate thousands of people who are well trained to do nothing but go back to school and get even more training."
There is some truth to that, and trade schools are indeed valuable, perhaps more than universities. But even if universities are just looking for money, and a portion of 'university education consumers' are becoming career students, (a rather cynical perspective) isn't that all the more reason for universities to at least incorporate sustainability into their operations?
Often tens of thousands of people work and attend universities and they have major traffic, waste, sewage, water and other implications for cities. Should universities aim to "EXCEED and surpass the banalities that constrain the rest of us"? Absolutely - that's an ideal they should strive for.
The structure of our economies appear dangerously unsustainable. Relying on the price mechanism to harmoniously restructure the economy is unrealistic and begs the question of what political situation underlies the whole price system. If universities can't change the way they do things, can we expect the other segments of developed economies to do so? If not, are China and India going to follow the same path? Sustainable?
Nightbloom says campus activists are "occasionally visionary, often juvenile, always volatile and not infrequently stark raving mad." So... in this case do you think the authors are visionary or what? What's your position? Keep in mind, they might be arguing that a more democratic university and open consultation process tends to be necessary, but not sufficient to achieve the thorny challenge of becoming more sustainable.
Coyote
5 years ago
'...but bear in mind that universities are not co-operatives, nor utopias, nor are they democracies...and they must operate within the same framework of..."
More pretentious twaddle from the master of it. Bring up that funny little white jacket that ties in the back and haul him away to the Seminary of Babbling Incoherent Status Quo Conventionality Think.
nightbloom
5 years ago
LOL - You're declining into self-parody, Coyote. You've said it all before, and (yet again) have contributed nothing meaningful to the thread. I've been reading your for about a year now, and I have to conclude that you're a pretty sad and rancid little man.
nightbloom
5 years ago
Robinhoody - Yes, having got that out of my system I'd have to say that the university is an excellent microcosm to pioneer new ways to up the ante on sustainability. Re-jigging the decision-making mechanism is a whole other can of worms in itself...and for Beelzebub's sake don't let the '(re)visionaries' near the curriculum - they've already wrought enough damage in that regard over the last thirty years.
Coyote
5 years ago
nightbloomer,
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.................../..../
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\
........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')
.........\.................'...../
..........''...\.......... _.·´
............\..............(
..............\.............\
Enough of a contribution for ya?
You aren't even worth engaging in a serious dialouge.
RickW
5 years ago
steveoverhere:
"...I see nothing wrong with a little radicalism while youre away at school, in fact, it's probably good for you."
Seems that most universities in other countries are hotbeds of radicalism. Here though............we talk the talk, but would rather drive than walk.
RickW
5 years ago
Ain't nuthin' wrong with trade schools. Most university types should likely be going to such anyway, and univedrsities should be getting back to their basic premise......universal education.
Fiat lux
5 years ago
I've long been of the opinion and writing in my columns, and on different forums, that protesting against governments, politicians and their actions is a futile exercise.
The causes of the problem are the universities where they miseducate and brainwash young people, who then go out and spread this garbage to governments and the public, as "sciences", all over the world.
I didn't take economics when I was a student, over 50 years ago, but remembering the heady intellectual atmosphere of the early postwar years, when many of the students were war veterans, who have seen it all, I'm certain that if any professor had tried to teach the garbage science of neoclassical economics, he would have been laughed out of the classroom.
Yet, today the whole world is hooked on to this criminal idiocy and all governments are enslaving their peoples in its service, while ruining the world for our grandchildren in this mad rush for "wealth creation", which is nothing more than the increased waste of resources and the diversion of the benefits into the pockets of special interests . We all learn this in grade 10, then spend years in universities, learning how to contradict logic
I picked up my first economic textbook in 1982 to find out what is going on and literally from the first page on I had to ask :"Does anybody really believe this crap?" Obviously do and the world is going to hell in a handbasket in the service of the greatest crime wave in history.
Thanks to our universities, now hardly more than corporate branches.
Compared to their crimes, the actions of Harper and Cambell are kids stealing candybars. .
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
Coyote
5 years ago
"Seems that most universities in other countries are hotbeds of radicalism. Here though............we talk the talk, but would rather drive than walk." RickW.
RickW and Fait about nail the essence of what passes for "university life" and conventional "intellectualism" , at least in this particular country and society. Of which especially nightbloom here, with his effete intellectual snobbery, double speak, conventionaliity, and hoity toity "acadameze", use all these instruments to hide the underlying reality that they are devoid of real, grounded and evolving ideas that might be of real use to society and life, certainly as lived by the vast majority of its citizens, male and female, at the lower class spectrum end, It's like all the phony status quo rationalizing and exploitation aiding models which so called economic science spews, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, in that fine old ideological chestnut,"I did it their way!"
And it is about that which most accurately describes university life as I encountered it, true, in a very limited way. And outside of the actual physical sciences with produce real things, true enough as often as not for corporations and their greed needs and of weighty harm to the real environment, because of their essential amorality masked as a phony kind of "objuectivity", the more "abstract" so-called sciences, like economics, political science and philosophy, are most often used to facilitate an inadequate economic and social system, or to attempt to rationalize the irrational in it.
And sorry bloomers, religion is not anything akin to a reality based science, but an attempt to hide from it, and again explain the immoral and irrational of the statuo system and its spawn, and rationalize submission to it.
The reality we all have to come to grips with is, as Fair has said, "...our universities, now hardly more than corporate branches." To which I would only add, and repositories of "conventionality and double think".
And the thinking that comes out of them gets spread as superior knowledge, by such as Friedman and, though in a much lesser and more transparently obvious, almost childlike way, by such as IAMC/Capitalism and the more simply silly nightbloomers.
IAMC
5 years ago
Universities as corporate branches ? This is a stretch. Are you not aware of the movement in the USA to expose US Universities as hot beds of radicalism and liberal thought. It's been documented that the faculty of the higher education providers are 85% liberal. There is a man named David Horowitz, who is pushing " The Student Bill of Rights " that asks for an unbiased educators without an agenda that supports Hezbollah and flaky anti-Americanism that exists now in the hallways of our higher learning institutions.
See the website ' front page magazine " and you will see a very alternate view to your misread on this subject.
nightbloom
5 years ago
RickW, I'm with you on the trade schools (and polytechnic universities). Trades have become very sophisticated (and very remunerative), so we have some cultural baggage to shed in terms of our perceptions. I've always been repulsed by the ingrained Anglo-Saxon contempt for trades (a remnant of the British class system, which still lingers in the english-speaking countries of the 'Anglosphere') - German and East European culture has a long tradition of cherishing the inherent value of a skilled pair of hands. And China is graduating several times more (proportionally speaking) engineers & skilled technicians than North America is, although the last figures I saw stated that only 44% of Chinese engineers are up to snuff by the standards of most Western universities. That's going to change very quickly though.
Coyote - nice drawing. You've clearly got a lot of time on your hands. Did you actually type that out, or did you cut & paste it from a template you'd saved? And I see you've got the whole university scheme figured out from the inside. You're clearly speaking from long experience on university campuses the world over. Now remind me again which universities you attended to gain such insight?
freebear
5 years ago
"Ain't nuthin' wrong with trade schools. Most university types should likely be going to such anyway, and univedrsities should be getting back to their basic premise......universal education."
So what happens when the land rush ends (oil goes up over $100/barrel; natural gas; gasoloine and so on); the boom busts and all the people encouraged to train as house framers, plumbers and so on get laid off; what then, go to university.
freebear
5 years ago
Hey IAMC, Capitalism and so on:
I saw on the news that the christian fundamentlaist right in the U.S. is calling the latest mid east conflict WW III (Dubya Dubya 3) and are awaiting the return of the guy with the beard!
Maybe that is why Harper is so supportive of Israel?
Fiat lux
5 years ago
Liberal thought equals liberty, independence, democracy, intellectual and academic freedoms.
Should try it sometime!
On the other hand, neoclassical market economics, taught in our universities, mean forced collectivization into the hands of a ruling class. "Rules based trade agreements" are the loss of democractic decision making powers by individuals and societies, in other words fascism. Or just another regurgitated and repainted version of Stalinist communism, that now destitutes and kills more people gobally on a long term, daily basis than both world wars and the death camps of Stalin, Mao and Hitler put together.
And these great conservatives were allso deadly enemies of liberalism and social democracy, or any forms of accountability to the public.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
Coyote
5 years ago
I DID IT THEIR WAY
I came with all my books, lived in dorms, followed directions.
I worked, I studied hard, met lots of folks who had connections.
I crammed, they gave me grades, and may I say not in a fair way.
But more, much more than this, I did it their way.
I learned all sorts of things although I know I'll never use them. The courses that I took were all required, I didn't choose them. You'll find that to survive it's best to act the doctrinaire way. And so I buckled down and did it their way.
Yes, there were times I wondered why I had to crawl when I could fly. I had my doubts, but after all, I clipped my wings, and learned to crawl. I had to bend, and in the end I did it their way.
And so, my fine young friends, now that I'm a full professor Where once I was oppressed, now I've become the cruel oppressor. With me you'll learn to cope, you'll learn to climb life's golden stairway.
What can I do? What can I do? Open your books. Read chapter two. And if it seems a bit routine, Don't come to me, go see the dean. As long as they give me my pay I'll do it their way.
--Bob Blue
Previous
nightbloom
5 years ago
Yes, there are so many frustrated liberal-Left geniuses with "clipped wings" being forced to "learn to crawl" on our campuses today. Come on. Who do you think you're talking to.
Coyote
5 years ago
"Who do you think you're talking to." nightbloomers.
I think we've already established that. 8-D LOL.
nightbloom
5 years ago
"Most university types should likely be going to such anyway, and univedrsities should be getting back to their basic premise......universal education."
RickW, I agree. Universities have become daycare repositories for the bored children of the middle class. The humanities in particular now peddle a watered-down bill of false goods that is ideologically sectarian and anathema to genuinely free and open inquiry. Much of the social sciences has been co-opted to function as the intellectual wing of the political Left (take womens' studies departments, faculties of social work, the new historicism that swept the classics and history departments, structuralism and deconstruction in the lit and art departments - all a blind search for a new creed that subordinated inquiry and education to ideology in the classroom). There have been some modest gains at rehabilitating this situation in recent years, guided by precisely the principle you articulate - a return to the "traditional" universality of solid liberal education to create common frames of reference and mutual understanding, in which ideological experimentations and intellectual conformity take a back seat to the cultivation of the individual students' critical thinking skills.
RickW
5 years ago
freebear:
"...So what happens when the land rush ends (oil goes up over $100/barrel..."
Why, civilization simply sputters to an end, with most people standing around, mouths agape, mumbling "feed me, feed me", and those who can do hands on stuff, survive to become either gods or slaves, in the best "tradition" of Mel Gibson's Road Warror........
RickW
5 years ago
nightbloom:
"...RickW, I agree. Universities have become daycare repositories for the bored children of the middle class...."
Universities have come to reflect the best of Ed Deak's portents, and the utter meaninglessness of life as a good consumer..........
Robinhoody
5 years ago
"Faculty members with hippy pretentions, large student followings and an axe to grind with "the administration" are to be approached with caution."
Then there are the lofty Economist magazine-reading, think-they-know-it-alls, frequently reclusive, introverted and repressed, and just too smart and otherwise cool for school to actually work with students for social change.
Academics are often ultra-sensitive to anyone who gets media attention, thinking they are being 'media whores.' Well, if you really believe in something you have to stand up, especially if you're on the right track. Re-jigging the decision-making mechanism is always important, even though the ideas of decision makers are obviously key too. The devil is in the details -- if it's too autocratic, debate and diplomacy take a back seat.
There are a million possibilities for electoral reform, for instance, but if you don't want to look at them, you'll just say that it creates unstable government or elects nazi's. What if the Greens in BC were given speaking time in the legislature and committees, even without a vote. That would be lame and no substitute for voting representatives, but it's and example of a minimal step to add some good ideas to our not-so-representative governance system. Not that universities or the BC goverment has any "special interests" -- indeed it is just part of the "framework of basic realities" of the world that we should take for granted. Eh?
RickW
5 years ago
If you start by giving the Greens (with no seats) speaking time in the legislature, the next thing you know, Joe Lunchbucket will be demanding speaking time. Then where would demoncracy be.............what with the people demanding to be heard?
Robinhoody
5 years ago
Votes are the thing. If a group like the Greens or the Joe Lunchbuckets rally behind a platform and get a significant portion of votes in all ridings but not the majority in any particular riding, all those people should still have some form of representation, if you think what happens in the legislature is relevant. I do. Lots of Greens, incedentally, probably don't. They're happy protesting and lobbying. Lots of what happens in the legislature may be a joke, but if you are ridiculous enough to actually watch committee proceedings some time, you can't help but think it's relevant. It isn't all a farce and people can be pursuaded by good ideas. Heck, according to Reuters the other day, "China is set to spend $200bn on renewable energy over the next 15 years, and industry players are racing to grab a slice of the action." The sort of thing the Greens, who are envisioning the corporate and labour interests of a more sustainable future, would be bringing to the public policy debate, daily. I use the greens as an example since the BC, like Alberta, has vast resource industries, so labour and corporate sectoral special interests hold a lot of sway in the two Parties and government generally and, more to the topic, universities. Changing decision mechanisms so that ideas, not just interests, hold sway is a must.
RickW
5 years ago
"China is set to spend $200bn on renewable energy over the next 15 years"
According to the latest Harper's Magazine article "Imagine there's No Oil"
http://www.harpers.org/MostRecentCover.html
at the rate of western consumption of energy, the Earth can sustain a maximum of 1.5 billion people, There are currently some 6 billions on this earth, of which about 2 billion reside in China and India. Of course, China will be heavily researching alternate energy, as it begins to approach western consuption rates. It seems we are the only ones in denial about the coming end to oil, ans what it means in practical terms (ie. no REAL alternatives that allow us to maintain our present lifestyle) Simply put, many people will die. China has the foresight to see this, and can "afford" to lose a few hundred millions. We have to wait ans see people dieing in the streets before we do anything about it.
nightbloom
5 years ago
RickW - Has there been any serious social and institutional analyses about "life after oil"? It could be the biggest historical gear-shift since the Industrial Revolution. The strategic implications alone are awsome (for one thing, it means the return of seapower - the nuclear-powered variety, that is, which will return the monopoly on global mobility to the national militaries of nuclear-powered states).
RickW
5 years ago
But can nuclear power, ships, et al, even be developed and maintained without oil?
seeker
5 years ago
I had both the privilege and the frustration of being involved as a community member in the UVic 'consultation' process.
It was a privilege to work with the environmentally conscious group, which included some satff and many students. Their dedication, concern and engagement in subatantive efforts was admired and appreciated.
The frustration was largely with senior university admin who see the university as having a provincially granted title to university lands which grants them the right to make executive decisions as they see fit over their property.
Seeing themselves as part of a wider community, with leadership responsibilty commensurate with their public trust, seems to ellude their daily reality.
I admire M'Conigle, Stark and all who have worked with thm for their continued dedication in the face of incredible odds.
Latarnik
5 years ago
Victoria is promoting growth of grean algea, Salmonella and E. Coli in surrounding waters. The worst part contempt of the environment of not just its University, but the whole Victoria, is that it does not treat its sewage. All the s..t they produce there flows right into the sea, which is little better than Ganges River in India with dead bodies flowing in a foam from soap, but still very primitive. I am surprised that US citizens from Olympic Peninsula are not protesting and not taking BC to the Courts and Congress.