KU Used Best Bad Data It Could Make, But Like KU Is the Hand that Feeds You So Shut Up

Oh Susan Twombly… what an incredibly, wonderfully un-thought out letter to the editor. It’s time for an interruption…

Twombly: In the August 14 edition of the Journal-World, an article reports on concerns that KU misrepresented survey data to justify opening campus to in-person classes. Why on earth would KU administrators do that?

You mention it later on in your own letter, but sure. Money, boo. Money.

So that they would have to work 24/7 all summer long?

If they worked 24/7 all summer long, what they came up with is embarrassing and a testament to the fact that overworking helps you make bad decisions.

So they could spend millions of dollars and human hours providing PPE and creating socially distanced classrooms to make the campus safe?

I’m not even going to address the funding elements here, *le sigh*. Maybe y’all shouldn’t have worked on socially distant classrooms at all given the safest option was online?

So, they could force people to teach in-person?

I know of tenured faculty in multiple departments putting pressure on GTAs to teach in-person when they are supposed to have an option. You really wanna go on this one?

That’s ridiculous.

Take a look in the mirror.

They used the best data they had…

Go ahead and stop there. You have two options here. Option one, the survey was heinously created to justify desired ends of opening up for in-person classes. Option two, you all are so bad at creating surveys that you probably shouldn’t be in HigherEd at all.

…to make the difficult decision to have an in-person experience for students who want it. And, what 19-year-old college-bound student do you know who does not want to go “off to college?”

Uh maybe immunocompromised students? Students who care about people beyond themselves? Remote learning doesn’t mean they can’t fly the coop. Also, since when do you all listen to 19 year-olds? Y’all won’t even listen to grad students. Because KU loves sports, I’ll leave it at this:

One can always second-guess survey data.

One can also always manipulate the hell out of it.

The chancellor and provost have a fiduciary responsibility to keep the place going.

See, you do know this is about money! You all know you can keep it open while not meeting in-person, no? No? Oh…

A decline in first-year attendance would affect KU’s bottom line for years.

KU’s tuition affects attendees of KU for decades because of debt. Welcome to the party? The lives of those in the KU community as well as the wider communities in Douglas County are a much more important bottom line…

The whole community depends on KU succeeding.

Do we though? How long have you been up in that tower? Are you trapped? Stockholm syndrome? Naw, that’s too much benefit of the doubt.

Instead of trying to bite the hand that feeds us,…

You misspelled: THE HAND THAT EATS YOU WHILE YOU STARVE.

…why don’t you write about the tremendous work the Center for Teaching Excellence and the Center for Online and Distance Learning have done to help faculty prepare for “hyflex” teaching…

How about we not cherry pick work being done by people admins force into apparent 24/7 labor and realize people could die, have long-term health conditions, and BYEflex the in-person idea altogether. No? Your high-dollar conservative white greek-life partiers, uh, people will be sad and their daddies won’t be as open with their pocketbooks? Ah, ok.

…or about the efforts undertaken to make campus safe?

How about just not have classes in person. Oh, I forgot, KU is in the shadow of UNC at all times… oh wait…have y’all seen them lately…

It’s really quite amazing (Translation: F**k you all we do what we want and we’ll smile at you while doing it like we always do while endangering your life and the lives of the surrounding community. But hey, KU iS ThE mOuTh ThaT FeEds Us!).

Oh bless her heart.