It happened. I’ll leave it up to the anonymous contributor to the UO Matters blog to sum up what happened Tuesday morning.
“Kitzhaber hires a boss for Pernsteiner.”
Summing it up in a few more words: Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber hired Rudy Crew, formerly an education administrator in New York City and Miami, as the state’s new Chief Education Officer, a position which Kitzhaber created to overlook his education overhaul. That is, how the Cowboy Governor wants to reshape education in Oregon to incorporate K-12 with higher ed.
And, in my oh-so-humble opinion, it really sucks.
It sucks that we’re adding levels of bureaucracy when we clearly don’t have enough state support. We know we don’t have enough state support because that’s the key reason given for potential tuition increases and not just this year. Diminishing public support for higher education is huge in Oregon, so why are we putting more fatty salaries and administrators in the picture?
We already discussed this briefly when the CEO was given his tasks in Senate Bill 1581 earlier this year. And, while I didn’t and don’t suspect that our editorializing was going to change much by itself, it really sucks that we here at the University of Oregon have to feel so lacking in power to fight the whims of larger organizations.
All year, ever since last June, we’ve watched as the state board ever so slowly encroached on our power. They threatened former president Richard Lariviere last June, putting him on a short leash, for trying to keep faculty in the state and keep the University somewhat competitive. Five months later, they fired him without consulting any University constituents, leaving them to find out in the middle of the evening from Portland’s Willamette Week.
We’ll give them this, they handled the criticism for that somewhat admirably. They recognized that a lack of community input was not a good thing. The committee they selected to choose our next permanent president will have three students — more than several other similar committees — and a good range of other members of the University.
The problem is, there’s still this underlying sense that we only derive our power from these state organizations granting it to us. And creating another level of administration just cements this notion.
The Oregonian reports that Crew has bounced around a lot during his career but also that he has promised Kitzhaber that he’ll stay in his position in Oregon for at least three years. Those covering his time overseeing the New York and Miami school systems have said that he is known for trying to shake up the system — being fired from the New York job in 2000 by Giuliani and axed in Miami in 2008.
So who knows? Maybe he’ll suggest fat-trimming on his own — stranger things have happened in Oregon.
But what I do know is that this whole year has done a whole bunch of making me upset with the system. (On a side note, that’s probably the most punk-stereotype thing I’ve ever said. Rock on, kids, and bring down The Man.)
And Kitzhaber hiring a brand new authority figure days before my school is scheduled to ask for a 6.1 percent tuition increase based on a lack of state funding isn’t helping. Except maybe to point out that no matter how much I’m peeved about it, it’s still probably going to happen.
Since power misappropriation seems to be a main force in public policy, I guess it’s good I’m learning that now.