Bloomington Herald-Times
July 2, 2012
Letter: Need good trustees
July 2, 2012, last update: 7/2 @ 5:46 am
To the editor:
Nothing better captures the difference in philosophy amongst Indiana University trustees than the exchange below at the June 22 trustees meeting, as reported by Mike Leonard. When discussing changes in student services, it was stated 177 positions would be lost.
Shoulders: hard for me to believe you'll improve student services by cutting 177 people.
Reilly: we're losing the middle class in this country. Need efficiencies.
Shoulders: precisely. Taking their jobs doesn't help.
Many of the trustees think like Reilly, believing that the bottom line is all that matters and that by throwing middle class workers into the street and asking those that remain to do yet more work (for near starvation wages), that somehow the middle class will benefit. Luckily, we have Trustee Pat Shoulders, who regularly stands strong against the Daniels appointed trustees, and realizes that we are real people, not just numbers, and that we should be fought for, not sacrificed.
IU needs more trustees like Pat Shoulders and fewer like Reilly. The surest way to get them is to vote for a gubernatorial candidate who will put education ahead of politics and will appoint trustees that will do the same. That gubernatorial candidate is not Mike Pence.
Peter Kaczmarczyk, Bloomington
