#mojito time

[1nt1mefun]

[vesta-writing]

So, my favorite mock tail is virgin mojitos, and the rest of my family all hate mojitos 😂😂

[tallwhiskeyginger]

That was...a lot of rum in not a lot of time. I make a thoroughly decent mojito y'all

[hazelbaum]

Sapo Verde (Happy Birthday) bae, @lover-of-sleep!!! I made you a plate of enchiladas! Rojas y verdes! Y un mojito (shhh, I won't tell if you don't)! Hechále pero con chingasos !!! Que te vaya bien y disfruta tu día mija!!!

[d2runner]

(via https://soundcloud.com/kemal187/d2-sgt-pokes-jungle-set-at-guru-jazz-upstairs) 

[goodbadlibrarian]

Fries With That

Tonight two of the three bargaining units at the Community College of the Damned voted to ratify the contracts offered to us by CCD's administration (the third unit will vote tomorrow). This came after three years of contract talks, the last year of which was characterized by the admin's refusal to even speak with our negotiating team; a potential strike that was averted because we realized it would screw over hundreds of graduating students; and the negotiators from our part-time bargaining unit being told that they were mouse turds.  We have been operating under the terms of the old contract for the last two years

Suddenly, with CCD's catatonic president given his walking papers by the Board and our accreditation review looming on the horizon, our negotiators were presented with a compromise deal. It looked less than awful on paper, and it was presented to the rest of us earlier this month. It included raises roughly 2% below Cost of Living increases, added health care costs that won't affect the higher paid faculty but could render health coverage unaffordable for the bottom fifth of our employees, an "exigency" plan that would allow the college to hire as many part-time instructors as it wants if certain outside funding targets are not met (a third of which rest in the hands of The Evil Mayor of Philthyland, who sits on the Board with several of his cronies), and the creation of an underclass of non-teaching faculty.

For me, it means a whopping three dollars a week, minus increased health care costs and the chump change I'm donating to our "Fuck Tom Corbett" political action committee. If my bum knee or my other bum knee start acting up, I'm screwed thanks to the new deductibles.

So here I am bitching about my White People Problems. But I do live in a magical land founded by crazy pilgrims who floated over the seas to practice their harsh and unhappy religion unmolested and slaveowners who went apeshit and kicked the largest military power on the planet's limey ass. The truth is, compared to the rest of the world I want for nothing and I get paid well to instruct people in How Not To Be Stupid. That doesn't mean I have to like it.

The long view of this is the continued dissolution of higher education. Even as dysfunctional as our not-so-little college family may be, we still do what we can with limited resources to help thousands of students cultivate the tools they'll need to make a life for themselves, if they can just learn to construct a coherent sentence. The bigger problem in higher ed is that it's been reframed as a cost center, a black box that must show a profit at the end of the day or month or year if it is to continue to receive fuel.

Problem is, learning don't work that way. Even if we had to strip it down to the basest economic argument, you would still have to factor in the lifetime of the lessons learned by every student we reach into that balance sheet - and I think you'd find that the net would be a hefty surplus in the long run. But we live in a time where we have to show immediate cost-benefit results, and those that don't come up black from semester to semester face the chopping block. But if you figured the overall value of a student who learned how to crunch numbers or operate Big Important Machines or administer medication without killing you, you'd find that their strict economic value skyrockets years and even decades after graduation.

And the short-time mentality of those in charge of the College's finances and future doesn't see past next year, especially when the Evil Mayor of All That has to think about his lucrative consulting business after he leaves office in a few - while we'll still be here trying to teach arithmetic to graduates of the school district that he's managed to defund to the point of starvation but still issues thousands of diplomas each year.

The logic of the contracts my colleagues ratified tonight is just another cog in the grinder that is wearing down the intellectual capital of this city and this country. We to whom these unshaped and unchallenged minds are entrusted will be left with far less than what we need to help these poor suckers develop a basic skillset or even start to wake them from twelve years of slumbering neglect. 

Tonight I'm going to put his aside and indulge in a delicious mojito, which will cost about the amount I'll get in a raise per pay period. Tomorrow I'll try to convince my students not to plagiarize for the third time in two weeks and dive headfirst into the impossible challenge of getting them to think. And after that I will be spoiling for a fight over how we do this education thing and how we fund it. I may just bring my boxing gloves.