Barry's feedback

[caseyg]

Just got a copy of the Disorientation (second edition) and read it cover to cover. Found it ... disorienting. ( ) Not to be defensive, everything written about the failures of the community efforts and attempts to work within the system turned out to be true, although Kevin Slavin continues to paint the BoT as a diverse group that includes some well-intentioned people, it is obvious that they hired this monster and turned him loose and let their Chair - Epstein, now Lincer - handle the more unpleasant details, which they'd rather not know about. The most upsetting section for me, personally, is the Vision Platter Deluxe, in which "the omniscient activist narrator loses their [sic] mind." I suppose there is something in there to upset everyone, a free thought zone of musings, "loose ends" as they say. The disorientation is good for the soul.
I have one addition and one correction (I could send it directly, but what the hell). It is important to note that there originally was no plan for an Expense Reduction Task Force, JB only announced plans for the formation of the Revenue Task Force. Task force first became plural during the Brian Lehrer show, as an appeasement to community pressure, and it sets up other places in the reader where it is made clear that the ERTF, TWF, and the WG were never taken seriously, that living within our means was never "on the table," even the secret CDG report was a token farce.
(For that matter, not sure why CUTF is not listed as a resource, there are a lot of important documents permanently available on that server. For that matter, Greg Sciano has re-posted Free As Air and Water on his personal website, that's a good resource/reader as well, but I digress.)
The correction is the Glossary entry on PILOT. We get two revenue streams from the Chrysler Building - rent, which every not-for-profit gets from its land holdings, and PILOT, which is unique to Cooper. It is the rent which "jumps up every decade," the PILOT is determined by NYC Finance in its yearly tax assessment and is subject to property tax rates for the year. The PILOT steadily increases as property values increase, it may very well keep pace with the rent, which are currently near 50/50. Losing the PILOT would be disastrous - or, I suppose, to JB's thinking, would justify the need to go to a full-tuition model, problem solved, Cooper becomes like every other college.
The writers really need to bone up on adding Yeshiva University to their list, as it conflicts directly with all the discussion about changing governance (and explains why at most private colleges (as opposed to public colleges), faculty unions are rare). The reader contains almost no numbers whatsoever, which is okay, I guess, although it should provide some references for those who do want to know about such things. It is certainly true that the administration has used numbers to mislead and to lie, but not every potential reader is innumerate (I personally wish my editorial on the failure of the Master Plan was in there, which I think lays out the major numbers very clearly).
But the Disorientation reader is correct - only Direct Action, not Indirect Action, will de-rail this freight train to oblivion. It is impossible to read the Disorientation reader and not realize that that is 100% true.
Here are links to CUTF, As Free As Air and Water, and AP:

http://cooperuniontaskforce.com
http://skiano.com/airandwater-archive
http://www.notnicemusic.com/Cassandra/cooper.html

Admittedly, they are all now archives (even CUTF's content has aged).