The lawsuit filed last week against the University of Maryland, College Park, School of Arts and Architecture asserts that the school has a “hostile and discriminatory” environment for the arts in light of the university’s financial woes and a lack of student support for the arts. The suit also calls for the university to compensate the arts schools it has previously supported.
This is the first I’ve heard about the lawsuit, and since the school is named in it, I thought it was pretty obvious what the university was doing wrong. The suit alleges that “the university has provided inadequate financial support for the arts, including the amount of financial aid that is allocated to the arts.
First of all, it’s worth noting that the university is trying to do the right thing. It’s the wrong thing though because I don’t think it’s a good idea to be giving the arts institutions a free pass for the way they’ve been treated in recent years. This lawsuit makes a strong case that there are some things that are just too important to the arts to be left to the whims of the whims of the whims of the whims of other people.
A lawsuit filed recently alleges that many of the faculty members at the University of Louisville were “pivoting on [their] faculty-member salaries” so that they could pay for their own entertainment expenses. That statement alone is enough to make me cringe. The fact that university officials are saying that the faculty are doing this is disturbing enough.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of faculty members who allege that they are being paid salaries that are so low that it is impossible for them to live life like they want to. While it’s hard to fault the university’s decision to keep this issue quiet, it’s concerning that these professors are doing something that is so obviously beyond their pay grade.
Well, the fact that the faculty are saying this is disturbing is troubling because its not like these are rich people who could afford to live like this. The problem is that it is just the tip of the iceberg. This is what they are suggesting: that the university makes it impossible for faculty to live life like they want to, and if they don’t like the deal, they have the right to seek professional legal counsel.
The trouble is this is not about you being able to live the life you want, its about you being able to live life as well as you want to. While it’s true that some people do not like the idea of going to work, it is not the case that you can’t live the life you want.
