CUNY Administrator Apologizes to QCC Campus for English Dept Threat « Student Activism

CUNY Administrator Apologizes to QCC Campus for English Dept Threat « Student Activism:

CUNY Administrator Apologizes to QCC Campus for English Dept Threat

by Angus Johnston

After the scandal surrounding a CUNY administrator’s threat to dismantle the Queensborough Community College English department broke wide in the academic media yesterday, that administrator — a QCC vice president — sent a letter of apology to the department’s chair. That apology, and an accompanying letter to the college’s faculty, went further than a Sunday letter from the QCC president to disavow her initial threat, and to pledge greater respect for faculty involvement in governance in the future.
In her letter to faculty, QCC vice president Karen Steele said she “deeply regret
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last week’s missive, saying it was “over-dramatized” and “sent in haste.” There are, she said, “no plans to enact” the “hypothetical” cuts to the department she threatened, and she pledged to “work mightily … to ensure all our 

Mitt Romney and the American Social Safety Net

by Angus Johnston

There’s not much I can say that everybody doesn’t already know about Mitt Romney’s attack on the 47% of Americans who, he says, just won’t “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” But I do want to make a couple of small points.
The problem Romney has with the Democratic base — the reason they won’t vote for him no matter what he does — has very little with any supposed dependency they have on government handouts. The 47% who pay no federal income taxes are spread out across the ideological spectrum. They include white Alabama retirees, Idahoans on Social Security disability, active duty military. Hell, a third of American voters with household incomes under $30,000 went for McCain.
So that’s the first thing, that he was slagging a big chunk of his own base. But that’s been pointed out before.