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I just talked about that moment from the hearings with a colleague. I think the key issue here is not whether how the Univ presidents responded is correct or not.
For the sake of my argument, let us assume that indeed HArvard, Penn, MIT are bastions of free speech absolutism where everything goes as long as there is no danger to individual safety. It is the double standard that is disgusting here because, unless one lived under a rock for the last few decades, we know that speech is severely restricted in other situations.

I actually am very annoyed with the Congresswoman because she lost a great teaching opportunity for the masses. As soon as the presidents answers with "well it depends on the context" to the question about "genocide against Jews" she should have asked the follow up question: " is calling for genocide of Blacks/Gays etc... prohibited under your anti harassment policy?" THAT would have been a great moment because it would have forced them to confront on the spot their own ideology. AS such they had time to recant, give half assed apology or resign so we don't hear from them again.

Unfortunately, the victim passed away. President Padilla just made the announcement this evening via a campus-wide email.

There aren't that many people on planet earth that care about this "issue."  Enough with the game playing. Let's get on with it.

To digress a little, this quote reminds something I noticed in the last years. THe "algorithm" (for lack of a better word) that handles the invisible cord that connects people's brain and their phone, reached this point where any "crisis" cannot last too long in the prime real estate area of those brains. Every single day there is a queue of "issues" that demand emotions, involvement, notification checks, likes, comments, emojis and other toys of mental stimulation.


A consequence from this is that pretty much every crisis has much shorter lifespan. It's not like it goes away completely but it moves quickly from high intensity to almost an afterthought. LAst semester I had these students in my classroom wearing various ribbons and pins to support keeping the painting. This semester I don't hear anything about it from them and, from a cursory look, it maybe the last thing in their minds.


This information overload is poorly understood but it explains many things including the stuff that I care about like teaching: it is harder and harder to make folks focus exclusively  on a learning activity for at least 10 freaking minutes or to care about something for more than a month or so. With so many "crises" lined up in the smartphone notification list, past semester might as well be ancient history

Regarding the mistake Heckler did in aiming to grow to a 6000 enrollment school. I am a senior faculty so I do remember some of those faculty meetings with Heckler. My impression at the time, as a person who is not an administrator (my competence is in the classroom) , was that he wasted  an enormous amount of time to get input from everyone regarding the plan for the future. He said in one meeting that to be sustainable we either keep the present programs but we need to grow to 6000 or we become a small university of say 1500 but then programs must disappear. What should we do?

But see, this is why we hire administrators who (should be) are better positioned to steer the herd to the right direction. Cause when he asked that question it was like those surveys on the street asking questions like: do you want keep the benefits as they are and increase funds to cover them or do you want to cut them and be sustainable with what we have? And folks of course will choose the former. Because the choice is presented as equally likely and possible.
You ask a bunch of faculty, some of them disconnected from the real world, of course they will say sure let's grow to 6000 and keep the programs. Why not 7000 while we are at it.

But now, in retrospect, I really blame Heckler for not giving the tough talk when it was needed.  INstead he jumped ship just in time and he's still pulling over 500K (probably deferred pay or some sort of severance) as of last tax filling, ironically, nearly just as much as the current president.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/350868125/202311319349304436/full
One is in the lifeboat the other still on Titanic's deck, same pay.

Anyway, if Padilla manages to save this place, his portrait should be in Brauer Museum in place of O'Keeffee but I don't hold my breath

At this point Padilla MUST sell the damn thing. If he caves now, after this stupid long battle, he would prove his is ultimately vulnerable to pressures like this. I was in a meeting when he stood his ground on this issue and he explained he does have the authority to do this and he is not required to ask for consent of faculty, etc, etc. So what I don't understand is why half measures and this poor attempt of trying to explain himself via these memos.

It is also possible that this relocation of these pieces is a middle finger shown to John Ruff and the likes to show them that "not selling" does not guarantee the art is in the museum. So for all practical purposes the Museum looks now as if the art was sold. To the public makes no difference if it is sold or hidden in a basement. Out of sight out of mind.

As I said in earlier posts, what is more damaging now is the distraction from other vital issues by making this issue the stupidest hill to die on.

I am actually prepared to be de-anonymized at any time online in the sense that, while I prefer not to, I am OK, at the end of the day, to stand behind what I say.
I studied, on the side, the concept of correlation attacks online (i.e. taking bits of information that don't seem revealing yet they narrow down quite a lot the field of suspects)

For example, just the fact that I am a senior VU faculty with right leanings narrows it down quite a lot (I think). In any case, I read somewhere that if one chooses complete openness and honesty to the extreme, it has the effect of quickly eliminating the fake friends and gaining real ones. I am not ready to take that route yet since I have a hunch that some of those fake friends still have some power over me

vu72: It is a very complex and long discussion impossible to confine in a thread. I know I seem to cowardly avoid the debate but this is one of those issues where (like many other topics) population is completely entrenched. The debate will never end and it will not move the opinion needle. I learned this the hard way in discussions with my leftist colleagues (which is to say the vast majority of faculty). I was worse off after. Life is simply too short for fighting unwinnable battles

I am going to answer your question about "attributes" in a vague way  (by necessity). If I told you in great details what it took for me personally to go from point A (my childhood) to point B (senior professor with respectable credentials) you would probably cry or not believe me. Or not even understand certain things. However, on this path from A to B I had zero "attributes" that AA or other policies care about. Not the right skin color, not the right genitalia, ethnicity etc..

Everybody knows injustices are countless and often personal. AA policies simply choose some winners in this horrible misery poker. Everybody else is invisible.
Whatever everyone thinks of the legitimacy of AA know this: it drives resentment (a destructive feeling that actually caused wars in the past), damages also the protected classes (how does it feel to be Black at Harvard and wonder if people look at you as if you did not deserve your spot) and ultimately perpetuates and even cause racism

But hey, as I said before, AA will be live and well under different name(s). So my rant does not matter

Sorry if this was mentioned already but, as an already senior faculty member, my experience tells me that, at the end of the day, the SCOTUS decision against Affirmative Action will have little impact. In fact it will have the opposite impact for those anti-AA as myself (more on this below).

Why? There is an endless list of proxies for race AND the hardline supporters of AA already prepared for this with changes in their application process that somehow obey the SCOTUS ruling while still using race as a factor in admission. Just as most faculty positions ads require now a "diversity statement" (a litmus test for the "correct" ideology) so will the applications packages for students will require a "special essay". Since John Roberts explicitly left this backdoor open, the only way to show that universities clandestinely use these essays as race proxies is to investigate and sue them. Good luck with this million dollars, decade long endeavor.
AA is going to be live and well at the end of the day (in practice but not in name) and the proponents of it now have the additional benefit of having another reason to label the other side as racist.

My personal take is multifold:

1. I am against considering attributes such as race (a poorly defined concept anyway), sex, gender, ethnicity etc...in any professional setting for which these attributes are irrelevant. In my own job I absolutely hate when I am "forced" one way or another to notice these attributes. It actually increases the likelihood of stereotyping and actually breeds racism in my opinion. I could go on but it's too long a story

2. NOBODY can stop an institution and/or a group of people from taking race into consideration even if illegal. There are too many proxies, you cannot read minds and you can only eliminate the blatant aspects of racism (such as legislated segregation in the Jim Crow era). But mark my word, if Harvard wants a certain number of people of a certain race, they will find a "legal" way. The only way this pestilential politics that poisons both the "unprotected" and "protected" classes will end is when people will simply treat race as other attributes such as the color of eyes. Which is to say we ignore them for 99% of the time and certainly we don't assign positive and negative points to it.

However, I will be long dead before that happens. Ideology is too deeply entrenched to see a change in this matter. Myself, the only  thing I can do is to just opt out when I can.

On a funny note, I can't wait to read the letters the Presidents will send to the campus communities decrying this decision and providing safe spaces for those emotionally damaged by those 6 evildoers in the SCOTUS

I can confirm that indeed during Heckler time there was this discussion about should we shrink or go big to 6000 students. But I remember a more laborious process whereby Heckler wasted nearly 2 years creating super-committees and sub-committees of committees in order to get the input from all constituencies on what to do etc...and then most faculty chose: sure let's keep all programs but become more sustainable by increasing the enrollment. As if the two choices were equally likely.

As a faculty member I have to stress that, as much as I distrust the administration, sometimes faculty as a whole can have a career suicide wish. Padilla at least looks like he does not have the same tendency to waste time like Heckler.

Another thing I remember, Heckler mentioned in a meeting during the Great Recession deflation with near zero interest rates, that this was great time to get more loans for strategic projects in order to secure historically low interest rates. I am saying this because I keep hearing folks talking about the problems with servicing debt during these time of big interest rates. So I don't really know one way or another, but if Heckler was true to his words we should have loans with ultra low fixed interest rates now. However if those loans were with variable interests then...party over.

David81: don't get me wrong, it is good for people to signal the issue but there is also a psychological negative aspect when students are reminded of this issue (not that there is a secret of some sort but when it appears in Torch it is probably more in their minds for a while at least).

To put it bluntly, I don't like students to wonder how much I am underpaid and why am I still here. That kind of thing. But that's just me.

By the way, this will be a non issue at state schools where salaries are public information. Purdue Exponent (the student paper at Purdue) every year publishes all salaries. That's how I found recently their football coach makes over 5 millions and their President just under 1 million

I did not follow this thread lately but I heard three more people from the same Department will not return next Fall. I really believe that compensation is the most urgent matter. In my private conversations I keep hearing that we need to increase revenue before we can do that. NOrmally I would agree but there is a fatal flaw here. The present conditions (economic crises, inflation, rapid rising costs, apparently Valparaiso is the third most expensive city in Indiana) make so that I am not certain if the measures implemented to increase revenue bear fruit quickly enough. If they bear fruit in 6-7 years, that is an eternity

It is better to go into even greater debt now in order to address the compensation NOW and then pay the debt with increased revenue. Put it this way: would you max your credit card and carry a balance in order to buy a TV? Probably and hopefully not. Would you max your credit card and carry a balance to pay for a hole in the roof? Yes because without urgent action the damage is greater than high APR credit card balance. It's called emergency for a reason.

To make matters worse, Torch the student newspaper had an extensive article on the compensation and I got to tell you I am not so sure I liked that because I don't necessarily want my students to be acutely aware of this issue. It can be humiliating...
http://www.valpotorch.com/news/article_963e20b6-df94-11ed-875b-1b3c3896ae2a.html

If I may chime in. Again, full disclaimer, I am not competent to form an opinion on whether the art sale is warranted or not. But with regards  to that dichotomy of selling the stuff to save the university. Perhaps this can be reformulated like this:

The University needs money TODAY to prevent the risk of going under tomorrow. If there is no money (again, today) aside from selling assets then is it ethical to hold on to them and risk, if not closure, a dramatic further decline in size, value, people etc? So it is not about whether keeping the painting CAUSES the university to decline. It's just that we need money TODAY. Do we have other assets to sell that are less of a sacred cow? I don't know. Padilla should explain this.

I went to one of those meetings where Padilla was grilled over the art sale. And someone told him, literally,  "find another way to obtain money for the dorms". Wouldn't be great if someone from the anti-sale team find that other way and come up with 10 millions $ ?

I have this feeling that all this is like fighting for who gets the best first class cabin on Titanic.

I can tell you that Lutheran higher ed has a history of underpaying faculty,

Is that a sin or a virtue? I'm not a Lutheran so I have to ask Just kidding.


[quote  Do the salary numbers everyone is quoting include benefits and other perks? Are the numbers gross or net?

These are gross salaries. Do not include the benefits. But even in this area the benefits are sup par with peers (though, as with many things, you can find worse examples). Health insurance got more and more expensive but this, let's say, is not really VU fault. But the contribution to retirement came down from 7.5% of salary to 6%. For those outside academia these seem to be high benefits but it is under the norm (which is usually around 10%).


[quote I find that those not working on the financial side of things don't always state true compensation accurately.

As far as I am concerned, true compensation is my salary plus 6% of it that represents the Univ contribution toward my retirement. Then the university covers about 75% of the health insurance premium. There is also a disability coverage that pays 60% of my salary until I reach retirement age in case I become disabled (one benefit that I would gladly hope not to "enjoy"). There might be other perks that I am not aware of but that is the gist of it.


[quote I also wanted to point out that comparing Colby College to VU is not exactly apples to apples. Colby has a FY22 endowment of $1.122 Billion compared with VU's FY22 endowment of $326.7 Million. I am sure they have many more endowed faculty postions than VU.

The only reason I used Colby as an example is to actually point out that there is a correlation between the demand on faculty and compensation. It is harder to be a profesor at Colby than at VU (just my opinion). So if VU does not have money to pay as its peers then it should at least lower the expectations from the faculty for example lowering research expectations. Especially for promotion. You need good research to earn tenure and especially to promote to full professor. YOu need in fact an external reviewer to vouch for the research value of the applicant for full professor. And then you promote only to realize that the pay gap compared to peers is the greatest for full professors...

As I said in earlier posts. It's the pitiful attitude toward the whole matter not the actual dollar amount. You would think Lutheran morality would include directives such as "hey, we are small and poor, maybe we can have reasonable demands such as being an excellent teacher and maybe a paper or two".  But, I think it's just market rules. If they still have people teaching classes they will continue on this course. I just hate the facade they put forward.

Dejavu, do you think there is still time to change tack? I agree with you on all of this but where it gets discouraging is that the university ought to have put some effort into catching up in the 90s and early 2000s when there was still applicant energy bolstering from below and some good PR wind from the Drews etc. That was the time to invest in bringing the university up to par with peer institutions and to press into hiring and keeping the best ... But  now after so many years, it will be much harder to do since the effects of all the mediocrity have set in so much and everything feels to be in a tailspin. So I worry the window has closed or is nearly closed — since is it really possible for a university to bring itself up to par when the enrollment is already in such steep decline? Now everything is contracting, and even if the university had a lightbulb moment about how to be a functional institution that incentivizes excellence and commitment, unfortunately the speed of everything swirling round the drain has a gravity to it that makes it harder to pop free of . Do you think it can still be done?

I really don't know but I lost completely my trust in those leading this institution. If they will prove me wrong I will be the first to knock on their doors, give thanks and raise money for their statues. My status, my seniority and many other factors converge into me probably  staying here and, hopefully, the time horizon is in such a way that I will retire before the ship sinks. But that is a bet like any other.   


There are still solutions but I don't think there are people determined and capable to implement them. What needs to be done is an emergency one time across the board raise to bring it above the embarrassing level. Something substantial that restores some faith in this place. Even if it means increasing the debt, selling more stuff, I don't know. See, if those in power really believe the place is in danger to be closed they may have a different sense of urgency...




I don't see this sense of urgency...Instead is the same old thing: let's have a committee look at the issue, in 3-4 months that committee reports something on a bunch of slides, then we propose some plan and discuss that plan some more, then we have target to start that plan 5 years from now. That's what they do right now. 


I also believe the faculty as a whole are to blame. In this place I don't see many holding the higher ups feet on the fire. Except maybe to painting issue. But ask yourself this: if an entire department (a critical one) comes at the president door and says: give us 10% raise now or we all resign today. Something tells me solutions will be found at least partial ones. Now, if only 1-2 resign in the middle of year (that happened) they don't care as long as the remaining suckers pick up the slack.


But, see, professors, by the nature of their profession, are not the kind of people who are comfortable having this type of blackmail negotiations. Instead they are good at dialogue, arguments, making committees and lots and lots of discussions.

I guess I am lost, which is nothing new. Are Valpo professors, based on their specialty, significantly (30%) underpaid compared to the national average? I also believe compensation should be primarily market based for that position.

I am not sure who mentioned this 30% underpay first but I know I did in an earlier post. And again, to clarify it one more time, the figure 30% is correct, I can vouch for that BUT in comparison not to the national average but with the average of our peer institutions. There is a list of peer institutions which our administration uses as a benchmark for many things  such as: teaching load, student/faculty ratio, percentage of tenured professors versus adjuncts, research expectations etc...A national average is not really fair because you will have in that basket completely different type of institutions. By that metric a full prof pulling 150K at Purdue University is criminally overpaid when in comparison to Big Ten schools (which is the correct comparison given what is expected of him) he earns close to the average.


This peer list exists for a reason. I am sick and tired to look at the best and brightest on that list when it comes to demands and then look at the bottom when it comes to compensation. In fact, I know of a colleague who said something along the lines "you can't pay more then how about ask us to do less".


Also the cost of living adjustment is taken into account and we are still around 30% under. Several years ago they did use the cost of living adjustment to show that the underpay is not that bad. Now even with that correction we are still that much under, again, compared to peers.


In any case, the reality is that this is not Padilla fault. This is a problem neglected for decades which now with the bad economy (inflation, etc) on top of that it shows now a very ugly face. If they had addressed this issue gradually over the last decades maybe we would have been now say 10% below the mean and people would have accepted that these are just bad economic times.


Whoever wants this university to NOT fail must understand that we already have stuff (I don't know how many) that qualifies for food stamps. If we continue this lousy approach (come up with a plan in a year, implemented in 3 years and maybe we see some uptick in 5 years, etc...) I would not be surprised to hear  about even junior faculty qualifying for assistance...Who knows...Would there be people still working at VU then? Sure. Would you send your kid to that kind of school?


As I mentioned in earlier posts, it's not about me here. I am not in the worst position. What riles me up is the embarrassing aspect of the whole thing for many years now. This is what I hate. I even refused long time ago to participate in search committees. We cater and lure the best possible, we snatch them for an interview and then we embarrass ourselves when the conversation gets to the compensation part.


Put it differently, if 15 or so of our peer are 30% above us, it is us doing something fundamentally wrong not them and not nature.

For Valpo, I think it is six 3-credit classes in an academic year for tenure-track faculty.

Good point summary. I would only add a small correction: the standard teaching load that I am aware of  is 21 teaching credits a year so more like 3-4. There may be variations across departments or colleges (I am a little vague because I want to remain anonymous).  There are individual exceptions (some service positions come with reduced teaching load). So during those good old times when higher ups wanted to increase the research output and the number of full professors, wanted to move gradually to a 3-3 load (i.e. 18 credit hours).



To those outside academia, there are, generally speaking, three types of universities/colleges when it comes to teaching and research expectation


1. Research intensive universities: teaching is usually 2-1 or 2-2 (i.e. 9 or 12 credit hours a year) with very high research expectation, grant writing, etc...People fail tenure primarily due to lack of research/grants, teaching matters much less


2. Middle of the ground: teaching is 3-3 (i.e. 18 credit hours a year) with serious research expectations but at a lower level than R1 universities and without pressure to get grants, etc... People still fail tenure and promotion for lack of research though teaching is the primary consideration


3. Teaching schools: teaching is 4-4 (24 credits) research expectation is minimal and often in a more holistic form (i.e. not necessarily in the form of peer review papers)


AS you can expect the salaries are typically in the decreasing order of this list.

Also, the 30% less salary for Valpo staffing seems to be exaggerated. Overall, is Valpo 30% below average or are we competitive?

It is real but, as I said, in comparison with the mean salaries of our peer institutions. And it is pretty accurate (distilled to the level of college, rank etc...) It is as close to apple vs. apples. Now, of course, if we change the peer list this difference may change up or down (who knows). Let's have a list made of bottom of the pit schools for purposes of salary comparison and another peer list with the most prestigious ones for purposes of demands on the faculty.


Also, about having 200 days off a year. That's not how this works. But I don't blame people thinking this way it is a common perception. It's just that it will take too much time to explain and I did it too many times on other occasions. Let's just say I should be so lucky. Hey, I might get a second degree and a second job in a more lucrative field.  Pretty much everything needed to actually promote from assistant to full professor will fill in those days no worries.


Put it differently: people would kill to earn 60K for working less than half year no?


But this does raise a valid point: what is the fair salary compared to how much is demanded from faculty? I am going to speak for my field only (which I won't disclose for now). LOng time ago I knew an insider at Colby College. I learned about their tenure process and also about a tenure denial. Altogether, I came to the conclusion that more is expected from a typical Colby faculty than VU faculty at least in my field. Especially if you want to earn tenure (which you have to in order to stay on the job). I think I could have earned tenure at Colby but only because I did far more than I needed to here at VU (and feel stupid for it now).


However, Assistant Professors  at Colby earn on average 90K or so (at least according to Glassdoor). I don't know about full profs but for sure is 6 figures. I can assure you they don't have 200 day off. But it does raise a question about whether VU faculty is paid enough for what they do. Of course it varies (some did far more others the bare minimum) but maybe the solution is to find a different peer list not just for salaries but also for other expectations. For example many teaching colleges have a 4-4 teaching load but next to no research expectation. Here at VU you need research to promote and get tenure on top of excellent teaching. What for? So that you advance to high ranked and be told you are a burden?


You might be surprised but 5-6 years ago, a certain Provost said we need to increase the pay bump for promotion because we have too few full professors and that does not look good. This now sounds like a joke. So, maybe if we drop the research expectation (too late for me  but maybe for the newcomers) and just ask for efficient teaching then maybe the current salaries will be justified. As I said before, you just can't make high cuisine with MacDonalds ingredients

Reminds me a joke: if Elon Musk enters our room we will all be on average billionaires 😀

Have the salaries fallen so much that they no longer are able to make a reasonable living?

It's not about making the living (not necessarily at least). If you define making  living meaning having enough to eat and having shelter then yes you can live...But that's missing the point.
Let me tell you a  reliable information: right now, across the board pretty much every faculty makes around 25-35 % less than the MEDIAN salary of peer institutions...For full professors it is about 30%. We need 30% increase just to make the median of peer institution salaries...And if you look at the peer list it's not like you see Harvard's there....
Some departments cannot hire foreign faculty because H1B visa regulations apparently require a minimum income for certain professions and if they meet that minimum it would create unethical inversions: new hire earning more than the senior colleagues...I could go on...But you get the gist...

Also, if the faculty is overworked and underpaid, why stay?

Personal circumstances can be very complicated (I hope this does not require further explanations).
A person stays on the job because he/she wants to and/or  no other options. When I say no other options I don't mean in a strict mathematical sense. I mean options that fit that personal slate of circumstances. By the way, I am not alluding to me on this. I am not in the worst position with respect to VU.


But let's put it differently: if the administration counts and rests only on those trapped into their position of VU who would otherwise leave if they could, would that kind of workforce save the university? Professors hating their lives before showing up for class? GIving up slowly and steadily and maybe work just enough to not get fired? Do you know how many times I heard "why bother?" in the last couple of years? And do you think students cannot tell? This is why I don't trust Padilla. Not because he wants to sell the paintings but because I believe the human capital is where the existential crisis is right NOW. He hopes to repair the dorm which MAY bring money in 2-3 years from which he MAY give him a way to address the compensation issues which MAY start to recover in maybe, what, 7-8 years?  that's an enternity. By then there will be another president with another crisis and another brilliant idea


So anyway, yes, if you don't like it don't take it. That's fine. Have fun with a school where everybody does not like it but must take it. Let's see how they can sell the product to increase enrollment then.

In no way am I suggesting that VU circa 2023 is facing circumstances as dire as VU circa 1923.

Actually, it may well be that dire, we shall see. And it if is, who's going to be the current version of Lutheran financial savior?

That agreement is at the heart of the possible lawsuit. The agreement states that artwork can only be sold to purchase new artwork for the Brauer Museum.

Maybe that is the reason Padilla is silent in the midst of this storm: because of pending litigation. Hopefully the litigation and the bad press won't cancel any benefit from the sell (if that ends up happening)


But, on a different point, as I said before I am not competent to actually judge the impact of the possible sell. Can someone though explain to me (like you would do for an art illiterate) what would happen in the following analogous scenario: say Louvre sells Mona Lisa. I am sure that would be a big deal and enough French people would start a revolution and raise a guillotine or two. But when the dust settles, how diminished would Louvre become? It's pretty big. How many people go there just to see Mona Lisa original? MOre importantly, aside from taking their entrance money, do art lovers in Paris should really cater to only those going there for Mona Lisa and ignoring the rest?


I am just trying to separate, on the anti-sale side, how much is emotion and how much is objective harm from the sale.

Did J Ruff not take the buy-out? i thought the retirement buyout people got research prof status and two years of salary so are still receiving pay and benefits from Valpo... Or did he retire normally?

It does not matter. Don't want to stir an argument , especially since I do not know Ruff personally, but I can't help thinking of VU retired people as those lucky ones to catch a seat in the lifeboats. And here they are now giving lectures and tough love to those still on the deck of Titanic. Just to be clear, I don't know if Padilla's attempt to sell the paintings to fix the dorms is the correct thing to do in an emergency situation (and mark my word, VU and many other places are in emergencies).  But what if he is right? Let's say the sell won't take place, alternative funding cannot be found (notice how many anti-sale say "find a different way" without getting into credible specifics) and then 2-3 years down the line VU declines further and entertains the possibility of closure.


Would John Ruff and other VU retired folks for that matter help people find a different job? MAybe I am unfair and I don't want to belittle retired people because I am sure they earned their status. But I cannot help thinking that ultimately they are not in the firing line. This is why I don't understand why Padilla is not stronger with counter-arguments like: "Ok, no sale, give me your solution that I can implement NOW so I can avoid catastrophe in 5 years". He did say in a meeting that half of colleges like VU may not exist in 20 years...I want to hear people like Ruff and Brauer say what they think about the risk of VU closing in 10 years...


Now, I know that in their mind, they may think that precisely the sell of the art jeopardizes VU existence. But people with that level of education should at least entertain the possibility that they are wrong and that the danger lies elsewhere. What about the wave of resignations? Was that due to a lack of enough original paintings? What if in 1-2 years you will have at VU only people who could NOT leave for one reason or another? Is that a problem? And if it is, is it greater than losing the painting? Nobody talks in these terms...nobody cares...

On top of this mess is the viral effect of social media. Regardless of how many people genuinely care about this painting, that number is inflated by the AI algorithm. Especially the younger generation that is glued to the screen and gets enraged about the topic "du jour". Not wanting to be sarcastic or unfair but lots of lots of people who feel revolutionary now for the cause of the painting never stepped foot in that museum much less were aware about a particular painting...But if so many "influencers" scream bloody murder then of course they "feel" the same.

Worse of, once a person is invested in a particular cause, it is extremely hard to change his/her mind because the more energy is spent for a cause the more painful is to admit you were (at least partially) wrong or to admit that you did not see the big picture.  Padilla (again a person I do not trust has what it takes to save the ship), should ask people  (Brauer, Ruff, etc...) whether they still want a campus around that precious museum. Do they want a museum without a university or a university without a museum if  the thing hits the fan for real?

To add insult to injury, Ruff is retired (according to the article at least). If that's true is even worse. Giving lessons to those on the Titanic deck from the safety of the lifeboat.