There just might be more opposition than you think

Edit – please view this post at its new location

Over in my last post about Biddy Martin, a comment from Bucky Joe started a discussion about the perceptions of recent UW actions by your average Wisconsinite.

People are *pissed* about the new Chancellor hire, the massive raises she and the UW President just got, and the new raise in tuition — all happening in the same week.

Imagine how this looks to the average Wisconsinite:

- We hire Biddy Martin, a weirdo from the coast (in their view, not mine), who’s scholarly fame is based on post-modernist interpretation of lesbian literature. In German. Clearly someone who wouldn’t have made it in the “real world”.

- Then the Chancellor is offered nearly $500k for salary, and the UW decides to raise all of the top administrators salaries by about 20% — including Reilly (can he possibly justify this based on his performance?) and others.

- This happens just as the Regents pass a 5.5% tuition increase.

- And it happens the same week that over 2000 people were informed that they’re going to lose their jobs at GM in Janesville.

Despite some very correct responses demonstrating how reasonable and justified the actions were, he is right on this one. Browsing the comment sections of the stories from around the state reveals that Nass and company are not faring too poorly in the PR battle.

Check out these comments from a story in the Green Bay Press Gazette about Biddy, but not even one about her salary

Of course the UW’s intent may have been to conspire with the press to deflect criticism to this bogus topic and away from real issues. Biddy Martin has campaigned for higher faculty salaries for the past 8 years at Cornell, not for controlling costs. Biddy Martin has instituted, or attempted to instituted pet projects that amount to affirmative action. Biddy Martin will earn $110,000 more than the last chancellor.

and

I don’t care what sex they are. There is no way anyone deserves $110,00 more than what was being paid. Way to raise tuition for all the kids jerks.

or these comments left in the Cap Times story

Why do these people need this much money?? Does the chancellor work 24 hour days? Are they on call on weekends?? Do they work 100 hour weeks or something? I would bet that nurses and doctors combined work harder than these people and I KNOW nurses don’t make $400,000 a year. Teachers work harder and they don’t see that kind of money either. I will NEVER understand why someone needs THAT much money a YEAR regardless of their job description.

and this one

“Martin’s salary is almost exactly the median of what chancellors are paid at UW’s 11 peer institutions, the UW System said.’”

This is the problem. This is the same way that CEO’s salaries have become bloated beyond proportion. The elite keep making the claim that they are better than average and therefore deserve a better than average compensation package. And it keeps spiraling up from there. (In this particular case she fits right in the median, but in a range that’s already inflated.) This makes sense if your average CEO or Chancellor or whatever was a lifetime employee of that organization, but there is usually a 5-10 year turnaround. Each time there’s a new hire everything gets inflated all over again. Just wait, in a couple of years from now the UW will be complaining that she needs more money because she needs to be at the median. Show me a study that shows the relative salary ratios of the cleaning staff compared to the chancellor and I’ll show you something that’ll make you want to think twice about the way things are heading. Bottom line – the middle class student can’t afford a public education anymore.

Or in another Capital Times story

$414,593

for a PhD in german and teaching ‘wymans’ studies.

Yeah.. and were not over taxed.

absolutely unbelievable.

or in the article about Kevin Reilly’s pay raise in the Appleton Post-Crescent

in the meantime…students go deeper and deeper into student loan debt!!! Unless they are minority or illegal, or a GREAT athlete….

Now these are all extreme examples and for every one of these comments there were multiple rebuttals. Still there is no denying that recent events have cast the UW in a negative light in the minds of some Wisconsin residents and that the news of Biddy’s recent salary increase over what Wiley earned has probably just made her job dealing with the state legislature that much tougher. This also demonstrates an important lesson for Biddy when dealing with the state legislature and the people of Wisconsin: it’s not always about what you do, how it is perceived is crucial.