Clinkin’ the crystal once again

"Everywhere there's lots of piggies/Living piggy lives/ You can see them out for dinner/With their piggy wives/Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon." - Piggies by the Beatles

A few semesters back, my first semester at UIC in fact, and my very first article for The Flame, I had the opportunity to cover a speaking event for Emil Jones Jr., the recently retired state senator and supposed "Godfather" to Barack Obama's political career.

I was an excited young journalist, thrilled to be covering such a big event andanxious to pull out a good story. And so I walked into the Illinois Room, where the event was taking place, steno notepad clutched in my hand, my pen twiddling around my fingers.

Almost immediately upon entering the room I felt a sense of unease. Here I was, some two weeks into my college career at UIC, and suddenly I was surrounded by the university's upper-elite, the people in control of the levers, who had the power to make things happen.

My initial thought was that it might be worthwhile to strike up conversation with them, to get to know them; after all, I might need them some time down the road. And so that's what I did. I peeked my head into different social circles to find out exactly what they were talking about. What I found striking was that they had very little to say.

The room was spread out into clusters of three to four people and all conversation could be summed up as superficial chatter: one person controlling the audience with self-congratulatory blather; the others uncomfortably shifting their knees back and forth, rubbing their thumb and index fingers across their chin to give the pretense of caring.

As I stood and watched, it was impossible not to notice the caviar waiters scoping the room, propping up platter dishes filled with finger foods, or champagne, and the lack of acknowledgment they were given as people simply reached their hand onto the plate, and turned their heads right back into their cluster.

This is the vision that stuck with me that night: that of a self-congratulating university elite, a group who seems so far removed from the needs of the average student or faculty member all the while lavishing themselves with high-end dinner parties, and such delicate items as $68,000 bathrooms, $500,000 home renovations, and now $170,000 pay increases.

Which of course leads me to my main point. On July 1st, UIC's new president Michael Hogan took office. In order to lure Hogan in, the university offered him a $170,000 pay increase from his previous job at the University of Connecticut, along with a $225,000 five year pay bonus. This will raise Hogan's official salary to $620,000 a year.
At a press conference given on his first day in office, Mr. Hogan responded to questions about his salary by stating :
"In academic life there is a marketplace. Every time you hire a professor, or vice president, or president, you go into the marketplace and the market will determine salaries."

Oh I see. It appears that the issue was simply out of Mr. Hogan's control. It's not that he even wanted the extra money, the university simply beat him with a shovel, tied his hands behind his back and thrust it upon him. What a shame that the university would so drastically overpay for someone that the market just a few years back had clearly determined was only worth the mediocre sum of $450,000. What could he have done to make his stock rise so drastically? It could certainly be argued that the University of Connecticut is in no better shape today than when Mr. Hogan entered it.

But this is the message we are sent. At a time when we are being asked to sacrifice, budgets are being cut, classes are being cut, hiring is being frozen, professors are taking furlough days, tuition is being raised by 9.5%, and so on and so on, the university's elite will partake in none of this. Those who could sacrifice the most will sacrifice the least. They continue to prove themselves to be exactly who I observed them to be back at that first dinner event, a group of elitists who care very little for the state of the university outside of maintaining their own privilege within it. Mr. Hogan, sadly, is only an extension of this.