I'm probably going to vote against it.

Sure, this is a better version of what we tried to do in 2008. It fixes things we got wrong, and those fixes are better than the new clunky parts it added (though that Senate composition gives too many seats to the small units, and the transition process seems like it will hit some mechanical problems, but whatever)

But, I'm more and more of the opinion that grad students should break off and do their own thing. Something that looks more like the faculty senate -it meets once a month, for an hour and a half. It just doesn't try to do that much. You make it bigger, with elections through departments/programs, which is how grad students think of themselves anyway.

Maybe the law students and the med students decide to go with us, but we're done with the undergrads and the 6 hours of meetings every wednesday night. As it is now, ASM is too much of a shitshow and virtually no one will consider being a part of it.

It's not unprecedented- the classified staff and unclassified staff have different organizations and procedures.

Yeah, I know lots of things would have to change - shared gov appointments, the SSFC, the SAC. SG seems easy- many SG seats are already specifically grad seats or undergrad, so we just go through and clarify those that aren't. The SSFC is harder - the non-allocables are easy, the allocables are harder. Maybe the GSSF becomes undergrad only, or we find a way to jointly appoint to the SSFC, or we get a change or new interpretation of F50 and we have two SUFACs. The end goal is the same: grad students aren't putting up with two nights of six hour meetings a week. I don't know that I care about the SAC - maybe to hell with it, we give it to the undergrads.

Grad students being free of ASM and into their own, drama-free SGA is the best way I can think of to increase grad student participation. That's what I want to vote for.

[part 2 of two]
It goes on: it helps faculty recruiting, because it gives departments/faculty more options in how to spread out teaching load. Once upon a time, summer was the time when you went to "the field", because that's what made sense to the faculty interests of the 19th century. In the 21st century, the ideal time to go to the field may not line up with that (for the IceCube experiment at the South Pole, this is high summer and when they're at their maximum headcount on-site.) There was some followup in my session about looking at some sort of "three semesters choose two" teaching load for faculty, which would people creatively line up their teaching obligations such that they may teach Fall/Spring one year and Spring/Summer the next, and have from early May to early January to be able to devote to research without necessarily having to buy-out their teaching.

You want another $100M for the UW? Then you should love the idea of real summer semester. If 20K students enrolled in the summer for a full load, that's exactly another $100M in tuition revenue. Yeah, you may have to pay faculty extra to teach in the summer, but, the UW is not likely to give them 150% of their current salary, you're capturing a lot more in tuition revenue, and even better, the benefits overhead is $0 - for most faculty right now, the UW pays 9 months salary but 12 months of insurance coverage even if they don't teach over the summer, so by having faculty teach in the summer you make those dollars go further.

Other costs are already fixed and continue for the year, like the buildings, the support staff (advisors, the Registrar and Bursars offices, the Dean's offices, etc. Leverage that so we can bring in more revenue.

This is already a very long comment, but here's the two takeaway points:

1. The UW needs more revenue. If it "takes money to make money", the problem is the UW has very limited money that it can invest in the infrastructure needed to make more money. You cannot dip at the well of higher tuition forever, and if I read one more comment of "just raise tuition and admit more Out-of-State Students" I swear to God I will go downstairs and punch a fucking manatee in the face. You have to offer something in return, and warm fuzzies about the "value of the degree" don't pay the rent. The MIU was sold because it was clear what you were going to get. The 3 semester year makes your rent money go farther and gives you more flexibility in determining your course through the UW, and can be implemented with not too much startup capital from the UW.

2. I'm sick of this meme of "the traditional experience must be preserved." If you're spouting that, have you been asleep for the past year or two? The "traditional experience" is being assailed in all quarters. How many NYTimes/Economist/Forbes/Chronicle of Higher Ed/Time/Newsweek/random books have been published recently questioning the current higher education experience? The game is changing, and it's not clear what the new rules are going to be.

I would like to think that as Universities change, the UW will be a leader in trying to figure that out. I don't know that our next Chancellor will be a modern day Charles Eliot, but I hope whoever it she or he will think that we can have the same influence Harvard had the last time around.

I'm not worried that we'll be able to recruit strong classes even if we do decide to do things differently - and if we sell it right, I think we'll be able to use it to out-recruit the UNCs/OSUs/Michigans.

[Part 1 of 2. Fucking comment length limits]
Damnit Kurt, I'm on the beach. You couldn't have waited til after the Rose Bowl to post this?

I'm going to limit my discussion to the three 15 week semester calendar because it's currently 75 degrees, there's a wonderful ocean breeze here, I've got some wine, and I'm feeling lazy.

And, just so people are clear how the calendar would work: 15 week semesters leave you with 7 extra weeks in a year. I'd use two in between each semester, and leave one for a break. There'd be a semester from about Sept 1 to Dec 15ish, like now, with classes resuming early January, about 2 weeks later. The spring semester would likely run for 16 weeks - 15 weeks of classes, along with a week off for the traditional spring break. That'd end late April, with a third semester starting early May going until mid August.

As I clearly stated in the piece, this is not a trimester system. Each 15 week period is the same weight as the current 16 week semester. (Academic Planning thought we might have to kick it up to 55 minutes instead of the current 50 minutes to meet some federal definitions, but otherwise saw no problem with that schedule).

Want a "traditional" fall and spring semesters schedule with the summers off and 4 years til graduation? Still totally possible. Just don't enroll in the summer. What's the problem? The only real difference they'd see is instead of four weeks between fall and spring they'd be back in two weeks. If that seriously means you choose Duke over the UW then boo-fucking-hoo. Good riddance.

You know who'd pick the UW over Duke because of this change? The ones who want the opportunity to take a full, real summer schedule if they want one. The ones who want to work their ass off and have the option to graduate in 2.5 years. I'll take those students over the ones who want an extra two weeks to be bored at Mommy and Daddy's over the winter.

You know what else it does? It lets people who want to do a real coop job or study abroad that doesn't line up with the summer to do so without falling behind an entire semester. Real companies do internships year round, and they're often easier to get in the spring and the fall than in the summer because there's less competition. For Comp Sci grad students, this would be fucking huge: nearly my entire group leaves Madison during the summer for Silicon Valley or Seattle, and they make like $25K for it - that's way more than we pay them. They'd make more if they could get out of Madison in April instead of the middle of May, and if they didn't have to twiddle their thumbs for 4 weeks because some fucknut freshman whiner needs the extra two weeks to be coddled. Ending the spring semester earlier is the single best tool you could give my department for graduate student recruiting, short of upping the base TA salary.

Frank Rojas commented on the BH piece, and said "we already give students the option of a summer session, and they're rejecting it: enrollment is going down". You know why? Because the summer experience fucking sucks. Cramming the semester into half the time is terrible way to learn. You can't do nearly as many projects. When CS offered more courses in the summer, you couldn't recommend them people: the programming assignments weren't as good (because of the compressed timeframe) and you learned less because you didn't have time to properly pull them off. Sometimes, it really is that you need a few weeks to think about and stew on things before you understand it. Fewer students enrolled in the summer sessions because they weren't as good, so we started offering fewer courses, which meant fewer students stuck around, which meant the existing courses got fewer students so we offered fewer courses, and so on. A downward deflationary spiral until now we don't really offer anything but the first year courses in the summer.
[continued in part 2]

I by and large don't care, but I've been assuming that's somewhat how this money is supposed to be used. I can't believe it'd just be for ASM.

I haven't seen any details, but I figured that this is a new pot of money, ala Event/Travel/Ops grants. Orgs could apply to it and get money for training from alumni. I don't know that I would put that much cash into it the first year (and, this is probably going to be a huge staff burden - that's a ton of extra travel reimbursements to process. Don't forget to account for that)

Even if you subscribe to the it's-all-an-MCSC-conspiracy idea, that's got to be how it would work. How else would they get any of the money?

If it's just bringing in ASM alumni to train just the 19th session, then it's an incredible waste of money. It's such a stupid idea that it can't possibly be the idea. I'm not even sure you can realistically spend that much money if you limit it to just ASM.

Spread out across all the student orgs, though, it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

Cutting UW System wasn't Reilly's idea, and I wouldn't say he's embracing it. 25% of Van Hise got cut, they're not going to be able to do everything, and pushing things out to the campuses was something that just had to be done. He hasn't flip-flopped, he got punched so hard he spun around.

And I don't think this extension of Ward's term was Reilly's idea - or at least I have no evidence to suggest that it is. As far as I can tell, this was an original idea that came through the University Committee. (Whether or not it was someone on the UC who came up with it, or someone who went to the UC and suggested it, again, I have no idea.)

So, I'd lay off Reilly here. Yeah, I'm pissed at him for not seeing that the value of the UW System does not come from the fact that we all report to the same board and share a bureaucracy, but that our individual campuses are great institutions and may need to take different paths. But I don't think extending Ward's term is some plot by Reilly and the rest of Van Hise to keep control over UW-Madison from slipping through their fingers.

That all said, I think extending Ward's term is a bad idea - if we can't get Ward to stay for at least a handful of years and agree to take the job without an 'interim' in the title, we should move ahead looking for a full-time Chancellor without delay. Too many things will be left on the back-burner while there's an 'interim' in place (remember that Vice Chancellor of Research we're supposed to hire?) and it's unfair to the next Chancellor to spend two years designing a new organization go live with it on July 1 2013, and also expect a new Chancellor to start on July 1 2013 and run the new system with no input into how it was designed.

Ward can remain effective every day in the first year, which is a lot of requirements gatherings and brainstorming anyway, and the new Chancellor can help us ramp up and roll out new organizational structures during 2012, and take ownership of the final product(s) in 2013.

It does happen more than once a year - at WIAA tournament time, some parking lots that faculty and staff use are also taken over - http://transportation.wisc.edu/parking/Event_wiaa...
And if you pay for a lot that is normally gated 24x7x365, and you work on Saturdays (like a lot of faculty) you're SOL on a lot more than just one day a year.

I don't think giving up parking spots for big events is unreasonable, just pointing out it's more than one day every few years.

I'd like to see the UW give over a parking lot or two every 14th and 15th of August, even if it's in the middle of the week.

Kurt et al -

Sometimes the right thing to do is to just delete a comment.

Oh, man, I just got home and wanted to think about things other than blogs tonight. And this was not the lit piece I am remembering.

The expensive dinner part is talking about this: http://www.forwardlookout.com/2010/11/maniaci-wan...
and this: http://legistar.cityofmadison.com/detailreport/ma...

I may be with Maniaci on this one. I say may because I'm not sure I can really follow the conversation. From the official city notes, no, I don't support what she's talking about. From Konkel's notes, I'm a bit more sympathetic, but I'm still not quite sure what the issues are. I can't tell you if that's because of the notetaker or Maniaci's description. I may also have a very strong mental model of what a conference is because of having attended so many technology conferences, which all operate similarly. I don't have a lot of experience in conferences outside of my field.

I support the the ability of elected officials to accept, as part of the standard conference fare that all conference attendees get, meals that would exceed the value of what the city would ordinarily allow. Here's a scenario I'm thinking: as part of most conferences, there's one night with some sort of "social event", like a harbor cruise or a dinner at the local museum. The cost of that event is just bundled into the registration fee for the conference, though it can almost always be separately valued - often you'll travel to a conference with a spouse, who won't register for the conference because they don't want to spend all afternoon hearing about query optimization but they'll go on the harbor cruise, so you can get an extra ticket for $100.

Basically, in order to go to the conference, you automatically get a $100 harbor cruise. The city is sending you to the conference regardless, so I say you can go on the harbor cruise. However, if you were at a conference, and the organizers said "hey, we're taking some of our VIPs on a special harbor cruise, do you want to go for free", then no, you can't go, even if it is an insult to a sister city.

I think the ordinance says that, and I don't think Maniaci is concerned about that, though she seems to veer off into scenarios that she thinks would fall into problem areas (the shuttle bus rides at a conference?) but are certainly permissible under the ordinance and existing ethics code.

However, Konkel's notes make me wonder just a bit if that's really what the proposed ordinance says:

"Weidel asks if she is at a conference with meals and drinks with the conference, if value is more than normally be reimbursed, how would you control or limit that? Just through disclosure?

Maniaici says yes.

Weidel asks if its ok to accept a $100 meal?

Maniaici says because the “alternative is a nightmare”. I don’t understand if traveling and on the spot how to you work around that, it’s not like I can say I’m just not going to participate in this part of conference cuz city says too much money in my eyes.

Weidel says that is the heart of matter."

I agree. To expect someone to instantly estimate the price on every part of the conference is absurd.

Where I think I'm against Maniaci: I think she's objecting to a strong reporting system for reimbursements. Imagine an Alder going out to dinner with people from a conference, and they go to a nice steakhouse. Now imagine that your host is going to pick up the dinner tab. The proposed ordinance requires in that instance, the Alder pays their own way, and then seeks reimbursement from the city - who will then turn around and seek reimbursement from the conference sponsor so there's a strong reporting chain. Maniaci would prefer a system with fewer steps - one where the conference organizer pays the bill directly and the Alder simply discloses the fact afterwards. Maniaci's reasoning is that it is less awkward and logistically simpler, to which I mostly say bull.

On logistics, get a city-issued credit card for expenses, turn in the receipts when you get home, and it's done. The Comptroller's office takes it from there. Super-easy, though a bit of a pain in the ass for the conference hosts who might just want to put it on their own card that night and be done with it, because reimbursing 3rd parties is a pain in the ass for THEIR comptrollers.

On awkwardness, imagine again going to that steakhouse, where everything starts at $50, and the city will only allow you to charge $20 for dinner. It gets into dicier ethics rules if the conference host can pick up that extra $30 if it's not an ordinary part of the conference - so my answer is you just have to say "Sorry, we'll have to go somewhere else, as an elected official I am under strict ethics rules and cannot accept your generous offer" I don't think that's unreasonable. Remember, Feingold didn't allow his interns to accept an ice cream cone from Herb Kohl.

So, bottom-line, my reading was the ethics board was pushing a rule that would require checks and balances and automatically forces strong disclosure, and made it difficult to avoid. Maniaci objected to the additional mechanics and called for simply disclosing, which I don't believe is strong enough.

Note from the Editor: Comment was originally posted in 2 parts due to a length limit and was edited to combine both into one. All words are the original authors

Can you cite actual case law for the cross-pollination example? Since it's out of Farmer B's control that seems like the sort of thing that the lawyers have some wonderful Latin phrase to describe how Farmer B doesn't owe Monsanto anything.

Well drat. This time it worked with the CommentLuv box unchecked. So I guess maybe I don't hate it.