When college administrators start talking about systemic racism and social justice particularly aggressively, this means that punishing budget cuts are coming. The moment our administration forced us to read ‘anti-racist’ books, I knew a ton of really bad budget shit was coming. So I took serious preventative measures. As a result, my department won’t be affected. Other chairs don’t understand the connection and didn’t prepare. They now have exactly one working day to absorb the cuts and modify next year’s schedule. Obviously, they are in a state of extreme panic. We are being told to cut out all of the lecturers. Just like that. It’s dozens of courses for some departments.

And I’m sitting pretty because I understand how neoliberalism works. My schedule has been approved with zero changes weeks ago. My program will not lose a single section.

As we say, knowing certain principles frees you from the need to know some of the facts. I didn’t have any information about the coming collapse but I deduced its probability and prepared.

The people who were particularly excited about the assigned readings are the most hurt and confused. Poor bastards thought the books signaled that the administration was on their side because only the good guys could be anti-racist, right? The administration that has the social justice rhetoric down pat has to be on our side, doesn’t it? Those poor, dim creatures.

And guess what I was doing during the discussions of the books? Right you are, I was designing graphs and tables to prep for the austerity measures.

Let’s see if this lesson teaches people anything. Probably not, but one can always hope.

Back in the era of burqa wars on this blog (does anybody on here remember them?), I was stunned by how hard it was to explain that forcing people to cover their faces isn’t a fashion choice like any other and that not having the right to show your face deprives you of identity, agency, and the capacity to communicate as a valid human being. There’s such poor understanding of how human brain works that people were honestly not getting it.

We are now seeing the effect of this ignorance in the embrace of mask mandates.

My college has suspended all promotions. The hiring has been frozen for years anyway. All in-college grants are suspended, too.

In short, it’s a budget crisis worse than the one we had when the state literally couldn’t pass a budget in 2 years.

Why, though? We have a record number of students. Great enrollments. The state is giving us exactly what it always does.

Well, here’s the deal. Students whose families make under $65,000 no longer pay anything for college. As a result, the college is fading out of existence. This policy is very new, yet the costs of it are already unbearable.

To summarize: ‘free healthcare’ means no healthcare and ‘free college’ means no college.

And before anybody brings up how things were different in 1972, yeah, we’ve noticed. It’s like coming out into the rain and refusing to grab an umbrella because yesterday the weather was sunny. Things are not the same because they are very different. We are holding on to an outdated memory and destroying the good things we have now to maintain the illusion that it’s possible to go back.

Once again, the idea that landscape causes behavior has been defeated by reality. Of course, a woman paid a price for this delusion, and just as obviously nobody cares.