R-ISLANDER

URI ENDS ARTS AND MUSIC PROGRAMS FOR CARCIERI BUDGET

The Projo this A.M. has an article that criticizes, rightfully so, the decision by URI to cut the art galleries and the Great Performances series.  Both are vital to a well rounded undergraduate education...now they've cut sports that undergraduates can really participate in, but not the Big Daddy of the money--users on this campus...Football and Basketball.  I love football, but let's get our priorities straight...keep the art galleries, the great performance series, and those sports that undergraduates can actually expect to join and cut just a small percentage of football and basketball funding to keep them...here's the link to the article critical of URI and its position on the arts, music, and sports.  Actually the Basketball and Football programs should themselves offer up part of their budgets to protect the art galleries and Great Performances.  It would speak well of their concern for the education of undergraduates...How about it guys?????

CARCIERI PONDERING SELLING THE STATE, LOL

The headlines in this morning's Providence Journal make it clear just how awful things have become because the state elected one of the worst if not the worst Governor ever.  Don Carcieri's stewardship of the state was really never rated as "good" or even "passable."  Now however, there is clear evidence that the Governor who touted his business experience as a manager for voting Republican in the last two elections for governor, has failed the state and its citizens miserably.  By any metrics you might choose, under Carcieri, the state, its economy, its quality of life for citizens is in a free fall. 

The proposed solution now is to sell the state's assessts to private investors thereby insuring not only that the present will be awful, but the future prospects of the state as well.  Time to dump Carcieri.  We can't stand another 3 years of this man.

What will he do next?  Sell off the University of Rhode Island?

Its time the democrats in the legislature stepped forward to stop Carcieri ... from destroying our present and our future.  One solution might be to sell off certain rights as other states have done to save their economies.  We should be looking in that direction.  There are ways to do it...I just don't trust Carcieri to make the right decision.  He doesn't have the best track record, lol. 

URI Moves Into the Future

The University of Rhode Island is most important to the success of the state of Rhode Island.  The state now pays only 14% of what it costs to run this great state university, yet URI is the largest employer in the southern part of the state and one of the largest employers in the state.

Its research in all sorts of areas, especially biotechnology, education, etc. is the fuel that runs our economic engine.  Needless to say the University is also important in moving our adolescents into the workforce with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in our techno society.

This week, the search for the second most important officer in the University, the Provost, continues.  We have seen three candidates, and will see another.  They are all outsiders.  They all have their special characteristics that make them possibly attractive to fill this vitally important position, but the real choice we should be making is an internal candidate.  Her name is Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Lynn Pasquerella.  Lynn has held the positions of professor in philosophy, chair of her dept., Graduate School Dean, Dean of Research, and finally Vice Provost.  She has Ph.D. from Brown, Phi Beta Kappa, research books and numerous articles, but most importantly that mix of being able to attract research $$$ (10M to date) and teaching experience (She has won the Teaching Excellence Award.)  She's not on the top of the search list, but she should be.  URI needs someone like Lynn and I hope President Carothers sees fit to bring her in and appoint her as the new Provost.

Those interested in good RI government should also be interested in their University and should let President Carothers, the Board of Governors, that they have a chance to move URI into the future with the best at the helm:  Lynn Pasquerella for Provost at URI!

Carcieri Sucks on Education

Charlie Bakst had a column on Sunday where he quotes Carcieri as saying he has done a lot for education in Ri.  Yeah, right.  In higher education the Projo tells us that under Carcieri, state support for URI's operating budget has shrunk from 24% to only 14%.  Each year, less and less to the State's Flagship University and the economic engine for the lower half of RI. 

Of course, part of the problem is House Speaker William Murphy who is more conservative and more Republican than Carcieri.  Time to dump them both.

RI College and the Courts...Women Win

This via Inside Higher Education Online:  Rhode Island College and the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island have settled a lawsuit brought by a women’s group over the college’s censorship of signs supporting abortion rights, the ACLU announced Tuesday. The campus Women’s Studies Organization, a student group, sued the college after a December 2005 incident in which its president ordered campus police officers to take down signs that the group had posted near the college’s entrance that said “Our bodies, our choice” and “Keep your rosaries off our ovaries.” Rhode Island officials argued at the time that the students hadn’t gone through the necessary campus procedures to post signs on campus property. Under the settlement, the college did not admit wrongdoing, but it agreed to cover the student group’s legal costs and to give it $5,000, the ACLU said.

Republicans back the Profit Motive and Screw Citizens out of Health Care and Education

The right wing, all Republicans and some Republicans in the House posing as Democrats are waging an all out war against public education, public heath-care, immigration, and of course equal rights for gay people. 

If you go to the spokespeople for the RI Right Wing at Anchor Rising, you can see that the fight against education and social services for middle and lower class RIslanders is in full swing.

They do note that one of the 13 lonely Republicans in the house has quit the Republican Party, Representative Richard Singleton (R - Cumberland) who will for now be an independent.  Unfortunately the pundits at Anchor Rising fail to make the obvious connection that RI Republicans are out of touch with the people of RI AND that could be the reason they can't elect anyone and the reason even those Republicans elected are jumping ship. 

RIslanders WANT a state-supplied health care system, they want a state-supplied education system, they want all those services that are their right to expect from their governments, EVEN IF IT MEANS higher taxes.  Who minds paying taxes if the profit is taken out of those services all RI citizens need?  No one once every one is able to understand and oppose the coporate and business propaganda that accompanies any effort to make our lives easier would oppose paying unconscionable profits to Insurance companies that cover nothing.....

Having not to worry about paying for education, health-care, all of life's basic services will be an enormous boost to our citizens.  Let's do it and do it NOW: state-supplied health care and state supplied education at all levels for all citizens.

Ask yourself:  What kind of man or group wants to make a profit off another's health problems?  Then deny them the care you promised.

What kind of system or man wants to make a profit out of lending money to others who want to go on to college?

Not very good people in either case.

TUITION INCREASES FOR RI HIGHER ED. STUDENTS

Higher education officials yesterday proposed tuition and fee increases between 5 and 6 percent for the 2008-09 academic year at the state’s three public colleges.

Families and students can barely afford higher education in RI public institutions because the state is not willing to invest in our most important state service and that is the education of RI students.

The state has been backing off supporting the University of Rhode Island and RIC and CCRI for years. 

Access to higher education in RI should be a right and not a privilege that one pays for.....we should have no tuition and no fees.  Adolescents eager to go on to college should be supported.  Most other countries in the world do not charge students or their families tuition or fees.

We should have free higher education for all RI students who seek it at our public institutions.  Education as a right.

Stop breaking the backs of working class, middle class students and their parents.  Truly support URI with 100% funding and stop charging outrageous tuition and fees.

Carcieri Anti-Women?

Several groups working for the welfare of women and children in the state are very upset with the Carcieri administration and the legal brief filed with the Court in the infamous "gay divorce" case which slams no-fault divorce because it lures women to further education and higher paying employment.  The groups asked Carcieri to withdraw the brief, written by radical fundamentalist lawyer and activist James Bopp, or to clarify his position, saying, “When a brief filed in the R.I. Supreme Court appears to put much of the blame of childhood poverty and economic inequality faced by women on modern divorce laws, and further criticizes those laws for encouraging women to pursue educational opportunities, surely the public deserves to know exactly where the dividing line between your official policy positions and those of the private attorney hired to write the brief lies.”

I'm telling you, Carcieri has got to go.  We can't wait another 3 or four years for a Governor with some sense of how to govern.  This fellow has no clue.  Read the Projo.  Virtually everyday he screws up in some major way...and it is usually the taxpayers at the bottom or those in dire need of social services who always seem to pay the price.

Carcieri NEVER screws up when he is cutting the taxes for the 500 richest Rhode Islanders as the budget of the state, because of him, is collapsing  and not meeting basic human needs.

URI Loses Pharmacy Dean to Better Salary

Bad news for URI and even worse news for the state of Rhode Island:   

The dean of the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy is leaving to become dean of pharmacy at The University of Iowa’s Academic Health Science Center.

Donald E. Letendre, who had been identified earlier this year as one of the Iowa school’s five top candidates in its dean search, announced he's taking the job.

URI's School of Pharmacy has a national reputation, but if the state continues to permit men like Letendre to leave, Rhode Island will be at the bottom of the pack when it comes to education, as is happening more and more under Carcieri. 

RI Higher Education System Cheaper than Most States

Well, after making a big splash about how RI Higher Education professionals make among the highest salaries in the state of Rhode Island, the Providence Journal finally put that information into context and noted that among the presidents of state universities in the U.S. President Robert Carothers of the University of Rhode Island receives compensation in the very bottom of his peer group.  The same is true of New England Public University Presidents.  RI gets its higher education system at cheaper rates than anyone else it seems.

The Projo also noted that "The combination of comparatively low pay and high housing costs is hurting URI’s ability to recruit and retain top administrators and faculty, he said.

URI’s faculty salaries also trail the national average — about $96,000 for a full professor compared with $106,000, according to the American Association of University Professors."