Research at University of Missouri
I understand, after reading on line and in a small article in the St. Petersburg’s, November 17, 2015 edition of the Tampa Tribune, that Mr. Bowen Loftin, has resigned as the Chancellor of the University of Missouri. This followed the resignation of the President Timothy Wolfe whose leadership in confronting racism on campus had been questioned. Friends who have a daughter attending the school tell me Mr. Loftin was “well loved by the student body and resigned only out of a sense of responsibility even though his office was not the one being challenged.” Mr. Loftin is now going to head up the school’s research program which will involve a pay reduction: $344,000 versus the $459,000.00 he was receiving as chancellor. From what my friends are telling me, the fact that he is going to continue to be a vital part of the University community is good. This being the case, I applaud both him and the school for the decision. I would, however, like to question the amount of money being spent on some of the salaries: the salary disparities at colleges and universities at the very institutions which are educating the future leaders of our nation. If we cannot create a more just and equitable community at these institutions what hope is there that the graduates are going to assume their roles in creating a more just and inclusive society. I suspect that if we want to make a society more inclusive we must look at many issues, including issues such as income disparities. Colleges and universities could be an incubator for exploring how we can create a viable economy and a more just one. The trend towards rising tuition resulting in acutely burdensome student debt, and extremely high salaries for many of the top officials (salaries of heads of sports teams could easily be a separate blog) of colleges and universities is not consistent with being such an incubator.
Out of curiosity I goggled the admission office of the University of Missouri to get figures on the cost of attending school there. I was informed that for in-state students the costs are roughly as follows:
Tuition: $10,586.00
Room and board: $10,062.00
Books and supplies $ 1,124.00
Personal expenses: $ 3,742.00
Total: $25,514.00
For out-of-state tuition, add approximately $15,000.00.
I also looked at salary figures at the University of Missouri. There are 17,311 employees, 188 of which make a low of $7.50 an hour and 215 who make over $200,000.00 an hour. Those 215 are paid a total of $43,000,000.00. The highest paid person is paid $637,000.00 per annum. Many of the teaching staff is being paid, in my mind, a reasonable amount. A cursory glance through the figures led me to think that the average teaching salary ranges from $50,000.00 to $100,000.00 per annum (this is only a guess from scrolling through the salary figures of 17,311 employees. I did not attempt to determine what other benefits are paid to various staff members.
It occurs to me that there are a number of issues which Mr. Loftin and his staff could research. Might I respectfully suggest that he and his staff elicit the assistance of staff from other departments including the low paid graduate assistants? The topics might include:
· The basic nature of systems.
· The work of Dr. Gary Slutkin on using the disease epidemic to understand patterns of violence.
· The relationship between equitable income and staff morale overall.
· The relationship between staff morale and student morale.
· The relationship between academic achievement the role of representatives from various cultural and racial groups.
· The relationship between psychological health of the campus and the role of representatives from various cultural and racial groups.
· The relationship between the emotional/psychological health of students of color and the employee roles of people of color.
· The relationship between the decrease and elimination of the bully (physical, verbal and cyber bulling) and the equitable treatment of the staff.
· The relationship between the distribution of staff incomes and incidences of campus violence.
At the core there needs to be a more astute appreciation or respect for the functioning of systems. An article by Robin Grille highlights the systems approach to reducing and/or eliminating the role of bully within a system. It seems that it is our habit to pick out the person who has bullied and name them as the problem. Whether it is an academic environment or on the world stage with groups such as the Islamic State, it is clear to me that we need look historically and currently at the system if we want to reduce or eliminate the bully role. Is it possible that the profile of the terrorist is similar to that of the bully? Is it possible that we could take a step back and analyze the attraction and power of the bully terrorist? Is it possible that the bully is not born and does not thrive as an isolated person or small group of people but as a part of a larger system? Is it possible that a more accurate diagnosis of the problem is necessary to affect a cure or even to initiate treatment?
A quote from the article by Ms. Grille might be helpful:
Natural Born Bullies by Robin Grille (Naturalchild.org)
“A holistic and therefore more effective approach to "treating" school bullies would be to compassionately examine the environment in which the violent responses were learned, and then to work co-operatively with family members to alter the dynamics of this environment. If violence is an adaptive behavior learned within a family system, it makes no sense to teach a bully not to be violent, only to send him or her back to the original system that they are powerless to change. It must be understood that bullying behavior is a reaction to powerlessness. To consider bullies as offenders is superficial, when in fact, they are victims. The fundamental way in which the family operates must change, through exposure to alternative means to authoritarian, punitive or "power-over" methods of child-control.
Systems-theory based family therapy models are non-blaming, they recognize and affirm that each family member is doing their best given the resources available to them. New options for more enhancing ways to interact can be taught, without finding fault in any individual. Why not have a policy that makes it standard procedure to invite parents or careers of school bullies to the school? The purpose would be to identify any areas where parents might need support through stressful situations, to train parents in assertive and non-authoritarian parenting methods, and to empower parents by including them co-operatively in programs to assist their children.”
At the University of Missouri, the problem was identified to be the unhappy students due to racism. The students then blamed the president Mr. Wolfe. Mr. Loftin, as chancellor, also voluntarily accepted responsibility. I strongly suspect that if those assigned responsibility for studying such issues as racism in the university community look just at that surface instances of possible racism, nothing substantive will change. It appears that one of the basic tenets or core beliefs of the those responsible for overall policies of the university is that all people are not equally worthy of respect. For example, some employee are not deserving of a living wage while other earn an extremely high salary. Those who can afford the total cost of attending the University are different than those who cannot. (To be fair I do not know how many scholarships they offer or how it is determined whom, other than athletes (assumption), get scholarships or grants.
Perhaps we could allow the work of Ms. Grille and others to tickle our thinking about the relationship between bulling, racism, salary inequalities, high tuition, and related expenses, and the overall health of the university system. It seems to me that colleges and universities could be the perfect incubators for exploring such relationships.
Written November 17, 2015 Revised November 19, 2015
I understand, after reading on line and in a small article in the St. Petersburg’s, November 17, 2015 edition of the Tampa Tribune, that Mr. Bowen Loftin, has resigned as the Chancellor of the University of Missouri. This followed the resignation of the President Timothy Wolfe whose leadership in confronting racism on campus had been questioned. Friends who have a daughter attending the school tell me Mr. Loftin was “well loved by the student body and resigned only out of a sense of responsibility even though his office was not the one being challenged.” Mr. Loftin is now going to head up the school’s research program which will involve a pay reduction: $344,000 versus the $459,000.00 he was receiving as chancellor. From what my friends are telling me, the fact that he is going to continue to be a vital part of the University community is good. This being the case, I applaud both him and the school for the decision. I would, however, like to question the amount of money being spent on some of the salaries: the salary disparities at colleges and universities at the very institutions which are educating the future leaders of our nation. If we cannot create a more just and equitable community at these institutions what hope is there that the graduates are going to assume their roles in creating a more just and inclusive society. I suspect that if we want to make a society more inclusive we must look at many issues, including issues such as income disparities. Colleges and universities could be an incubator for exploring how we can create a viable economy and a more just one. The trend towards rising tuition resulting in acutely burdensome student debt, and extremely high salaries for many of the top officials (salaries of heads of sports teams could easily be a separate blog) of colleges and universities is not consistent with being such an incubator.
Out of curiosity I goggled the admission office of the University of Missouri to get figures on the cost of attending school there. I was informed that for in-state students the costs are roughly as follows:
Tuition: $10,586.00
Room and board: $10,062.00
Books and supplies $ 1,124.00
Personal expenses: $ 3,742.00
Total: $25,514.00
For out-of-state tuition, add approximately $15,000.00.
I also looked at salary figures at the University of Missouri. There are 17,311 employees, 188 of which make a low of $7.50 an hour and 215 who make over $200,000.00 an hour. Those 215 are paid a total of $43,000,000.00. The highest paid person is paid $637,000.00 per annum. Many of the teaching staff is being paid, in my mind, a reasonable amount. A cursory glance through the figures led me to think that the average teaching salary ranges from $50,000.00 to $100,000.00 per annum (this is only a guess from scrolling through the salary figures of 17,311 employees. I did not attempt to determine what other benefits are paid to various staff members.
It occurs to me that there are a number of issues which Mr. Loftin and his staff could research. Might I respectfully suggest that he and his staff elicit the assistance of staff from other departments including the low paid graduate assistants? The topics might include:
· The basic nature of systems.
· The work of Dr. Gary Slutkin on using the disease epidemic to understand patterns of violence.
· The relationship between equitable income and staff morale overall.
· The relationship between staff morale and student morale.
· The relationship between academic achievement the role of representatives from various cultural and racial groups.
· The relationship between psychological health of the campus and the role of representatives from various cultural and racial groups.
· The relationship between the emotional/psychological health of students of color and the employee roles of people of color.
· The relationship between the decrease and elimination of the bully (physical, verbal and cyber bulling) and the equitable treatment of the staff.
· The relationship between the distribution of staff incomes and incidences of campus violence.
At the core there needs to be a more astute appreciation or respect for the functioning of systems. An article by Robin Grille highlights the systems approach to reducing and/or eliminating the role of bully within a system. It seems that it is our habit to pick out the person who has bullied and name them as the problem. Whether it is an academic environment or on the world stage with groups such as the Islamic State, it is clear to me that we need look historically and currently at the system if we want to reduce or eliminate the bully role. Is it possible that the profile of the terrorist is similar to that of the bully? Is it possible that we could take a step back and analyze the attraction and power of the bully terrorist? Is it possible that the bully is not born and does not thrive as an isolated person or small group of people but as a part of a larger system? Is it possible that a more accurate diagnosis of the problem is necessary to affect a cure or even to initiate treatment?
A quote from the article by Ms. Grille might be helpful:
Natural Born Bullies by Robin Grille (Naturalchild.org)
“A holistic and therefore more effective approach to "treating" school bullies would be to compassionately examine the environment in which the violent responses were learned, and then to work co-operatively with family members to alter the dynamics of this environment. If violence is an adaptive behavior learned within a family system, it makes no sense to teach a bully not to be violent, only to send him or her back to the original system that they are powerless to change. It must be understood that bullying behavior is a reaction to powerlessness. To consider bullies as offenders is superficial, when in fact, they are victims. The fundamental way in which the family operates must change, through exposure to alternative means to authoritarian, punitive or "power-over" methods of child-control.
Systems-theory based family therapy models are non-blaming, they recognize and affirm that each family member is doing their best given the resources available to them. New options for more enhancing ways to interact can be taught, without finding fault in any individual. Why not have a policy that makes it standard procedure to invite parents or careers of school bullies to the school? The purpose would be to identify any areas where parents might need support through stressful situations, to train parents in assertive and non-authoritarian parenting methods, and to empower parents by including them co-operatively in programs to assist their children.”
At the University of Missouri, the problem was identified to be the unhappy students due to racism. The students then blamed the president Mr. Wolfe. Mr. Loftin, as chancellor, also voluntarily accepted responsibility. I strongly suspect that if those assigned responsibility for studying such issues as racism in the university community look just at that surface instances of possible racism, nothing substantive will change. It appears that one of the basic tenets or core beliefs of the those responsible for overall policies of the university is that all people are not equally worthy of respect. For example, some employee are not deserving of a living wage while other earn an extremely high salary. Those who can afford the total cost of attending the University are different than those who cannot. (To be fair I do not know how many scholarships they offer or how it is determined whom, other than athletes (assumption), get scholarships or grants.
Perhaps we could allow the work of Ms. Grille and others to tickle our thinking about the relationship between bulling, racism, salary inequalities, high tuition, and related expenses, and the overall health of the university system. It seems to me that colleges and universities could be the perfect incubators for exploring such relationships.
Written November 17, 2015 Revised November 19, 2015
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