Josh Benner

Category: Uncategorized

  • BGSU Faculty Union: Commentary

    (Note: this was originally written as a letter to the editor for the BG News, the newspaper of Bowing Green State University)

    Faculty unionization is one of the most significant issues that Bowling Green State University has faced in the last several years. If the faculty vote in favor of a union, the relationship with faculty and the university will forever be changed.

    This is not meant as a philosophical diatribe lambasting the relevance of any union anywhere, and any time, however I do believe that it would be detrimental for BGSU.

    This is also not meant as an immature, illogical rant, intending to stereotype the professors for being necessarily greedy in supporting unionization. Indeed, I am sure that there are numerous wonderful professors – many of whom were instructors of mine as a student at BGSU -who support collective bargaining and who have/will vote favorably to unionize. With these faculty, I must respectfully disagree.

    According to the Chronicle on Higher Education, the union would include full time professors, instructors, and lecturers.

    I feel that this leads to one of the problems typically associated with unions, which is the extreme difficulty in relieving a union member of his or her duties for inefficient performance. Tenured professors are already nigh on impossible to fire, but for part time instructors and lecturers, the union would force the university to continue paying more inexperienced lecturers whose performance may not warrant them continuing to work in a teaching capacity. I can see no way in which this benefits the undergraduates. It will necessarily mean that there are unqualified instructors instructing.

    The teachers argue that many of our peer institutions in the state of Ohio do pay faculty at a higher salary than BGSU. I don’t think that this is something that should be ignored.

    I think an ideal situation would be one in which the university is able to work with faculty, and where faculty can be paid at a level competitive with other universities in Ohio, but where it is not a requisite that the faculty must unionize in order to achieve these ends. If other institutions pay more without unions, then why is a union necessary in order to get a raise? If other universities give raises without unions, then why can’t the faculty and university work together?

    Perhaps the university has not been as amiable to work with faculty as they ought to, but if the university and the faculty can work together in order to reach a positive outcome without a union being formed, I believe that this would ultimately be the best thing for the purposes of the university as a whole.

    I think a union that has the ability to go on strike does not benefit BGSU, and in such a case, a strike would effectively have the university by the throat. This would not be good for the university and it would certainly not be good for the undergraduates. If there is a union, a faculty strike is a very real threat. Not necessarily in any type of immediate future, but having this as a possibility at any time is not beneficial to the well being of the institution. The results would potentially include higher tuition, diminution in services, and lost class time.

    Ultimately, while an honest look does show that faculty raise legitimate concerns in their aspirations of forming a union, once their collective ends are met, the union will remain. Long term, I think history has shown that the consequences have the potential to be very negative for the institution.

    I would encourage the Undergraduate Student Government to take a more active role in educating undergraduates on the issues and on voicing opposition to the Union. USG has been very clear as to faculty having a right to work for the benefits of their constituants. I believe it is also the job for USG to advocate for your constituants who are the undergraduate student body and only the undergraduate student body, and a faculty union does not benefit you, the students.

    I say these things as a proud and concerned alumnus of Bowling Green State University. I feel that most of the indicators I’ve seen point to unionization likely happening. It concerns me about the future of BGSU. Hopefully, I’m wrong, and this unionization movement will ultimately Roll Along!

  • Notes on Obama healthcare address

    I watched the MSNBC coverage of President Barack Obama’s address to the joint session of congress before I actually read the transcript. I thought one of two things. Either MSNBC had reached a new level of shamelessness in their love of Obama or the speech was really as good as they made it out to be. Had the latter been true, I was expecting it to be right up there as a hybrid of Abraham Lincoln’s ”Gettysburg Address” and Franklin Roosevelt’s “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” post Pearl Harbor speech with a dash of Knute Rockne’s “Win one for the Gipper.” Unfortunately, that was not what I found it to be.

    I would like to know what was so brilliant about what our president said. Even if you support Obama and his health care plan, was there anything magical that he said last night that he did not say in any of his previous 28 speeches on health care? No. And he again spewed many of the same lies that were debunked long ago. Does he care about this? Do his supporters care about this? No.

    No lie is too great for this man to advance his agenda. He talks about his opposition using scare tactics and then goes right into scare tactics of his own. His lies and scare tactics are one and the same. Among others, Obama said in the speech: “Let me repeat this: Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.” This has been an ongoing dispute between both sides of the aisle.

    I think the impetus of this dispute is philosophical. People who are supporters of Obama’s health care argue that the bill does not say that people will lose their current insurance providers. For sake of argument, I will concede that point. Regardless of what is in the bill however, the problem is not that the government is going to make people change. The problem is that higher taxes and government regulations are going to make it more difficult for insurance companies to stay in business and they are going to make it more difficult for companies that provide insurance to employees to continue to do so, which will cause more and more people’s private insurance to be dropped by their employers who will not be able to afford to insure them. It is for these reasons and others that people who oppose the Obama health care plan argue that it will cause people to lose their insurance.

    I get the sense that some of the pro Obama people on TV and radio think the opposition is stupid. It’s not that the opposition thinks the bill literally says on page 15 “Article II, Section 4: ‘Make every American change his or her current health insurance provider.’”

    No, no one argues that it is spelled out that literally in the bill. But based on the regulations which the president and congress have said would come from this reform; it would make survival impossible for many of the insurance companies whom the left is constantly demonizing.

    Another issue of heavy debate is the coverage of illegal aliens. President Obama said that illegal aliens would not be covered in the plan, which provoked South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson to proclaim from the chamber, “That’s a lie.” Is it a lie? As factcheck.org noted, the bill does say, “(Sec. 246) titled “NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS,” which states: “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

    So yes, the bill says one thing but it is vague about how exactly it is going to enforce this. Again, as factcheck.org mentions, many who oppose health care reform view this as being a loophole. Another significant lie from last night’s speech was when the president said, “I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.” Why does this man have any credibility for anything he ever says about discipline in terms of spending? This congress is full of the fattest fat cats in American history. They have racked up the biggest budget deficit and dug the national debt deeper and deeper. Saying it will not add to the national debt is both a lie and impossible to predict. What happens when it does? Is the government going to apologize and look for a way to rectify its transgression? No, they’ll find a way to blame Bush for it! The Congressional Budget Office says the bill would put nearly 1 trillion dollars onto the national defecit in the next decade. And that is an optimistic assumption, and keep in mind that the federal government is never under budget for anything that they do.

    To a person who follows Obama, in last night’s speech, there was little surprise. He tried to appear as a moderate, devoted to working with both parties in the spirit of bipartisanship while promising utopian views of what his plan will produce. For Obama supporters, the response to Obama’s bipartisanship efforts seems to be, “What’s not to like? What more could the republicans want?” What the democrats don’t seem to understand is that republicans don’t believe that Obama has any interest in promoting bipartisanship. In his entire political career, or in the 233 days since his inauguration, when has this man ever shown a desire to work with both parties? He has said things in the past suggesting the will to work together, but in concrete actions, when has he ever shown this?

    Going back to Obama’s election in November, the media hailed that he would be a centrist, but this has shown to be a far cry from reality. Although Keith Olbermann was impressed by the effort after the speech on his MSNBC show “Countdown,” when he said, “No one would look at the president’s attempt for bipartisanship as anything less than sincere and admirable.”

    Well Mr. Olbermann, I view his effort for bipartisanship with about as much admiration as I do his commitment to not adding to the national defecit.