Idiotic Bureaucracy

Okay, the title is redundant. Sue me. I found someone else in the math department who got the "terminal" letter this summer. I won't use names since I have no idea how anonymous he wants to be, but he had a chance to talk to Fisher about it, and there are three of us total. Neither of us knows who the third is. Now, losing 3 full-time lecturers currently means that they will be short by 15 classes next fall, so they need 15 more graduate students. The graduate student offices are full, and even if they convert the three presumably vacant offices, that still only houses 6 of them. Now, if they'd put sensibly sized desks in the offices, they might get three to an office, but with the monstrosities currently in there, there's no bloody way.

There's another issue, however: to attract and keep that many graduate students, they would need to build up the department; i.e. hire more tenured faculty to teach said grad students. Whatever their excuses, the administration is not going to save money under this scheme. All they're going to do is alienate every department on campus. That might actually be good for those of us "terminated" under this one, though I'm honestly still thinking it's time to do something else, so I may go back to grad school regardless.

ADDENDUM: Oh, yes. I have declared this the Frank Burns administration, for obvious reasons. Whenever Frank Burns was put in charge of M*A*S*H 4077, he implemented bizarre policies that made no sense. A few random examples: decided to move the camp across the road one day, and move it back the next day; declared the camp 'dry' ... this lasted until his policies backfired and he gulped down a drink; not while he was in charge, but he once spent an entire afternoon getting the condiments in the mess tent perfectly lined up and in order by height and popularity; the list goes on. The more I hear about what this administration is doing, the more it reminds me of Frank Burns. Thus I hereby name the President and all his Compatriots 'Frank Burns' for the duration.