The Name of the Wind on a friend’s recommendation. It didn’t grab me at first but it’s starting to pick up. It’s nice to have an easy read for a change.
If I can chime in for the faculty side of things: absolutely, we’re in this together.
I’d add, though, that the ballooning of responsibilities over time is not unique to staff. Faculty have been increasingly pressured to take on more students, inflate cohorts and class sizes, bring in more dollars in a more competitive funding landscape, etc.
In the same meeting today where I met our new Associate Dean who is filling a newly-created position to chop in half another associate Dean’s duties, we were told there’s a reorganization and one of us has to “volunteer” to take on slew of new admin duties.
The crux for me is: I don’t know of anyone that’s saying we should “cut the fat” from the staff on the ground keeping these colleges and departments alive (it sounds like you’ve got some shitty colleagues and I empathize!). But there’s multiple tiers of senior leadership being paid on scales far and above other staff.
It’s great your president is fortunate enough to be able to donate her entire salary. But that’s doesn’t take away from the high dollar figure she and others like her are being paid. How many staff could be hired if the “extra fat” from her salary were directly rerouted to staff compensation?
I work in research, not medicine, but I see the brain drain in my circle. We were the first to leave but many of my colleagues indicate they’ll follow soon. The relative sanity of Austin wasn’t enough to keep us in Texas.
I know at least one: the state GOP took umbrage with a police oversight act that Austin passed in May.
Edit: actually, the “Death Star” bill didn’t concern this. There was separate legislature proposed to block city-specific police oversight but it was unsuccessful thankfully.