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Fighting For an Austerity Budget Since November 2011February 13, 2012, midnight |
 Mission Statement Change Will Threaten AccreditationAfter trying to change the mission statement on the Cooper Union website, the administration has learned that it's not that simple: the Middle States Association will require a process to institute such a change. This process is exactly the process Bharucha announced in his Presidential Address on December 13, 2011.In 1998, the Middle States Association criticized The Cooper Union for not having a clear mission statement, so over the next two years one was developed by all of the stakeholders - students, faculty, alumni, and staff - and ratified by the Board of Trustees in 2000. Its two paragraphs are: Through outstanding academic programs in architecture, art and engineering, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art prepares talented students to make enlightened contributions to society.Like charter revision, one cannot elide "awards full scholarships to all enrolled students" without a formal process - proceeding down the path of what President Bharucha calls "the reinvention of The Cooper Union." continued on right |
Alumni Council Unanimously Approves No Tuition ResolutionSchool of Humanities, Student Councils to FollowAs a follow-up to a draft resolution proposed at a special January meeting, at its February 8, 2012, meeting, the Alumni Council, elected representatives of the Cooper Union Alumni Association, unanimously approved a resolution in support of maintaining The Cooper Union as a college that charges no tuition to all of its students. The process by which the wording of the final resolution was achieved was perhaps as unique as The Cooper Union itself. The President of the Alumni Council initially asked the Chair of the Communications Committee to draft a resolution. This draft was debated at the January meeting, and in mass e-mails within the Council. From this process two or three alternate drafts were created. At the Alumni Council meeting, members selected paragraphs and sentences from different versions, debated the order and proper wording of each phrase, and finally arrived at a consensus. Although discussion of the resolution again started late in the agenda, the Council was determined to finalize the resolution before the Phonathon, with members vowing to not leave the room until the document was finished. As the official meeting time passed, the members continued to work on each sentence, phrase, and word. At the end, the final text was read aloud and was passed unanimously by all present, with no objections and no abstentions. The final text will be available soon, and there are plans to publish the text in The New York Times. According to a report from Friends of Cooper Union, the School of Humanities, the Art Student Council, and the Joint Student Council are preparing similar resolutions in support of the mission statement of the college. Activists Occupy Wreath-Laying Ceremony with BalloonsActivists may have let the Founder's Day party pass, but the wreath-laying ceremony in Peter Cooper Park was taken over by balloons with the words, "110 Years Free," as evidenced by this slide show posted on Flickr by Friends of Cooper Union. Posters and painted bodies made the protest impossible to ignore. The New York Times covered the protest in their local blog.
continued from left The administration's original strategy was just to cite the Deed of Trust of the college, which does not require that The Cooper Union's art, architecture, and engineering programs be free. But the very reason the administration gave in their cy pres petition to mortgage the Chrysler Building and take out the loan to start construction of the NAB too early - to not do so would hurt the college's ability to maintain its accreditation - is now exactly what stands in the way of Cooper changing its mission statement in order to start charging tuition.
To this end, the stakeholders of The Cooper Union - students, faculty, alumni, and staff - have enormous power and clear standing to refuse to allow the administration to use it to push through a change - any change - in the mission statement.  |
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Past
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Inauguration 10/18
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Halloween 10/31
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Open Forum 11/8
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WNYC 11/23 |
Summit 12/5 |
Address 12/13
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Summary 12/16
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Future
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 - click on pic for first draft (1/23/12) of infographics by Matt Arnold AR '82 depicting Real Estate, Investment, Expenses and Revenues02-04-2012 A Fiduciary Timeline (rev 2) - Cooper's march to bankruptcy 01-31-2012 The Deadline (rev 1) - would a five-year plan be sufficient? 01-28-2012 Counter-Narratives to the Administration Narrative (rev 5) - a baker's dozen 01-28-2012 Scenarios for End Times (rev 4) - don't say you weren't warned 01-27-2012 Hide the Salami (rev 1) - Board Statement and Summary 01-23-2012 Don't Worry, Be HEPI - how to portray an increase as a reduction 01-15-2012 Becoming the Story - administrators who draw attention to themselves 01-15-2012 The New Colossus - on reinventing The Cooper Union 01-12-2012 Further questions the Office of Public Relations refused to answer 12-28-2011 Summary of the Summary - of the December 5 Summit 12-10-2011 Urtak Poll - what you think 12-10-2011 (spreadsheet) 12-09-2011 My Fantasy Presidential Address - if it were only so 12-09-2011 Selected Community Summit Slides - the short version 12-07-2011 Great Hall Financial presentation (silent, PDF, video1,2,3) - socko multi-media show 12-02-2011 Questions the Office of Public Relations refused to answer - past, present, and future 11-28-2011 Cooper Voices - eloquence, passion, and moving anecdotes 11-27-2011 Do You Want Deficit With That? (rev 2) - inside the financial statements 11-27-2011 (spreadsheet) 11-27-2011 The Real Bharucha - what you'd rather not know 11-24-2011 Fee vs. Tuition (rev 3) - why words matter 11-20-2011 The Halloween Massacre (rev 5) - the opening salvo 11-19-2011 Cooper Payroll - The Monkey on Their Back (rev 2) - non-academic bloat 11-19-2011 (spreadsheet) 11-18-2011 Questions answered by Chair Epstein - all 6 AP questions asked and answered 11-17-2011 Trustees Mainly Board Junkies - just another not-for-profit to them 11-17-2011 (spreadsheet.) 11-14-2011 Cooper's Strategy through 2007 - Alum Pres observes Board before the crash We make mistakes, and we're continuously trying to make this better. If you read or see something that you know is wrong or that you think could be better, don't write us off - write to the Publisher. |
Everything started with The Halloween Massacre. Then came Counter-Narratives to the Administration Narrative, followed by Questions answered by Chair Epstein. By this time, The Alumni Pioneer was born. The first version of Scenarios for End Times followed next, then Fee vs. Tuition, along with Cooper's Strategy through 2007, written by Don Toman, former Alumni Association President. Finally, the first analyses, Cooper Payroll - The Monkey on Their Back (and its spreadsheet) and Trustees Mainly Board Junkies (and its spreadsheet), were published. The Thanksgiving break was a major time for The Alumni Pioneer, with the initial publication of Do You Want Deficit With That? (and its spreadsheet). At the end of the long weekend, The Real Bharucha was published. Within a week the two had garnered over 400 downloads each. On Monday we changed tack with the inspiring Cooper Voices and published questions the Office of Public Relations refused to answer when, given three days to respond, well, the Office of Public Relations refused to respond to our questions. We posted The Deadline on the morning of the Great Hall Financial presentation on December 5, 2011. (Silent and PDF versions were posted two days later, and Selected Community Summit Slides two days after that). Dr. Bharucha enjoyed reading our publisher's Fantasy Presidential Address, but laughed it off. We took a snapshot of the Urtak Poll. The Board stayed on schedule and published their December 16 report on the financial crisis. This led the Cooper Union Community to the 2006 cy pres petition to the NYS Supreme Court. The false optimism of the fantasy presidential address has been replaced with the stark realities of the administration's Fiduciary Timeline and an attempt to analyze the Board Statement and Summary while they continue to play Hide the Salami. Just before the holiday break, the Gang of Six posted their summary of the Community Summit and announced a second set of breakout sessions, so we published a Summary of the Summary for those with really short attention spans - although we certainly encourage our readers to read the original summary, read the full transcripts, and watch the videos, if you are so inclined. Over that break we didn't sit still: we created a a new set of questions that the Office of Public Relations also refused to answer, we wrote about administrators who, through their actions, end up Becoming the Story, and we created a song and slideshow based on Bharucha's "reinvention strategy" called The New Colossus. We explain the Higher Education Price Index in Don't Worry, Be HEPI, and created some fantastic infographics in time for the third Breakout Session. If this is too much, check out the lighter fare on Page 2 and a serial webcomic, Peter Cooper & The Demons of Debt. We've even added a couple of interactive games to amuse you. |
We are forced to conclude that the administrative action items demanded below will never be realized while Jamshed Bharucha is in office - that the "new transparency" is a sham. The demands are:
Other Resources and LinksSince site statistics indicate that readers are wandering all over the Not Nice Music website trying to figure out who the hell Barry Drogin is, here's a Cooper-focused page about the Publisher of The Alumni Pioneer. |
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Cassandra's Curse Copyright © 1993, 1996, 2007, 2011 by Barry Drogin - All rights reserved
