When you get time, please review the information below. And don’t hesitate to contact me with questions or suggestions.
Gregg Morris, editor, the WORD & this site.
— The Department’s rep is so bad that other departments have been encouraged by the Administration to consider developing their own media curriculum. Colleagues have whined that no one from the department has been invited to participate in College-wide discussions about curriculum and media.
— The Administration has decided not to provide significant funding that it promised a while back and has decided, for punitive reasons it appears, not to add a promised additional line to the film program, which has been described on occasion at department meetings as more like a film studies program. A while back the admin brought in about, I’m not sure of the exact figure, $300,000 to $500,000, from NYC City Council cache to help resurrect the department’s TV studio. That was about five years ago and the resurrection has yet to occur. City College benefitted from such funding a while back.
Revised D:F/M Logo in the Works.
— A decision to hire on the j-line was supposedly made but no one has shown up yet this semester. The Chair at a dept. meeting last semester announced a possible delay but provided no details. Another line is in stasis with the resignation of Bernard Stein.
— Enrollment started declining sharply after the present chair was elected several years ago. There is a belief that part of the decline has had to do with the internecine warring but it may be also do with a serious decline in the quality of the Department’s offerings to students. That is, students serious about journalism and media in terms of getting internship and/or jobs have sought (or seek) other departments and programs that seemed to offer better opportunities. Those serious about broadcast/electronic journalism take classes, for example, at Brooklyn College. Etcetera. A while back the Chair emailed this writer that the P &B Committee was concerned that enrollment was down across the major because of the reputation of my intro news writing class for being tough.
— Enrollments are doing well at other undergraduate CUNY J-programs.
— The Chancellor’s Office ordered the Hunter Administration to stop the College’s ICIT (Instructional Computing and Information Technology department) from supporting the Department’s Internet/IT efforts because of one, porn sites on Department servers, which the department refused to remove after a warning, and because the Chair summoned campus security to remove the IT supervisor from a faculty meeting when he was about to inform everyone at the meeting of the sanctions.
— The Department’s Internet apparatus – service provided to students and faculty who need ICIT’s support – has been severely hobbled. D:F/M’s internal IT support is weak, to say the least.
— Also: The sanctions by the Chancellor’s Office’s addressed the personal abuse being inflicted on the IT supervisor by staff (including student staff acting on the orders of senior D:F/M staff) and public allegations that the Chair had been coercing the IT supervisor to feed the parking meters where the Chair parked his car. Staff members have been required to feed the meters.
Recalling controversy of D:F/M staff
coerced to feed parking meters.There was concern about a lawsuit because of repeated union contract violations. The former D:F/M IT person, under orders from the Chancellor’s Office, was placed in another position outside the departed as well as promoted and given a raise.
The Chair, including almost all full-time Colleagues, have been accused of participating in a phony Violence in the Workplace complaint (the Hunter Administration is somewhat implicated). That issue is still smoldering. Whiffs of a litigious nature and/or a public embarrassment caused the College administration, according to my understanding of the Chair’s comments at a department meeting a while back, to stop its involvement in the internecine fracas in the department.
If you haven’t already done so, you can review the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s exposé, especially the comments, to get an idea about the Raab administration managerial stye (which seems to be emulated in this department).
There’s other stuff because in this department there is always other stuff.
Please advise about corrections, clarifications.
Best.
Tags: Academic Bullying, Andrew Lund, Arnold Gibbons, Bernard Stein, Billy d Herman, campus bullying, Carolyn Kane, CUNY Chancellor William P. Kelly, Greggory w Morris, Gustavo Mercado, HUnter College Faculty Delegate Assembly, Hunter College President Jennifer Raab, Hunter College Provost, Hunter College Senate, Hunter College Vice President for Student Affairs Eija Ayravainen, Isabel c Pinedo, Ivone Margulies, James Roman, Joe McElhaney, Joel Zuker, Karen Hunter, Kelly Anderson, Larry Shore, Martin Lucas, Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, New York Healthy Workplace Advocates, Peter Parisi, Ricardo Miranda, Robert Stanley, S3863/A4965 – The NYS Healthy Workplace Bill, Shanti k Thakur, Steve Gorelick, Stuart Ewen, Tami Gold, Timothy Portlock Christa Davis Acampora, Tony Doyle, Vita C. Rabinowitz, workplace bullying