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Published: April 26, 2008 10:32 pm
Readers' Forum: April 28, 2008
Time for Clinton to bow out of race
After reading the April 23 edition of the Tribune-Star, the stories on Hillary Clinton’s win in Pennsylvania, I had more questions than answers.
Why is Hillary still in the race? The Clinton camp continues to taunt Obama about not being able to close the deal, when in fact Hillary is the one who cannot close it. The article says that “if Hillary took West Virginia and Kentucky there are only 100 delegates combined”. Also, the article goes on to say that “even if she were to win Guam, Puerto Rico, Montana, and Indiana that none of them are likely to give her a big enough margin to put her over Obama, and that to win she needs to convince voters that Obama is not electable”.
She already admitted on national TV during her debate on CNN that “Obama could win against Sen. John McCain!”.
Hillary Clinton needs to bow out of the race and endorse Barack Obama to unite the Democratic Party. The longer this drags out, the more I fear the result will be a Republican ending up in the White House. God forbid!
— Robert T. Bell
Terre Haute
Striving to end gender wage gap
April 22 was Equal Pay Day. In 2005 a woman on average made 77 cents per every dollar a man earned.
Over a working lifetime, this wage disparity costs the average American woman and her family an estimated $700,000 in lost wages.
Pay equity is at the forefront of BPW/USA’s legislative advocacy because no other singe economic issue has a greater impact on the lives of working women.
BPW/USA leaders were present when President Kennedy signed the 1963 Equal Pay Act and continue to advocate for legislation, such as the Paycheck Fairness Act that would further strengthen the Equal Pay Act.
Having Equal Pay Day in April is symbolic of the point into the next year that a woman must work in order to earn the wages paid to a man in the previous year.
The wage gap affects women throughout their working lives and then follows them into retirement when they receive lower pension and Social Security benefits received while working.
There is a positive economic impact of having pay equity. If we could eliminate pay discrimination in Indiana we could help eliminate many social issues. Retirement incomes would rise. There would be less debt, fewer foreclosures, better educated people, healthier people and fewer children living in poverty.
BPW members and local organizations have been engaging in grassroots activities across the country including hosting “Unhappy Hours”, issuing proclamations, lobbying and distributing information in their communities.
— Coloma Miller
Terre Haute
Conflict harming ISU’s reputation
ISU administrators are absolutely amazing at dodging blame and pointing fingers. Falling enrollments, building fiascos, financial aid debacles, travelgate, law school, cars, planes, … All someone else’s fault.
The new dodge at ISU surrounds the mishandling of problems in the Department of Life Sciences.
As Provost Maynard stated (Tribune-Star, April 17), “some of the problems date back as many as 10 to 15 years.” He failed to mention that the problems have had a common core. Faculty members in the department (not the same group each time) have twice expressed dissatisfaction with the same chairperson. One unrest resulted in a signed agreement (which was never followed), and the second resulted in a formal vote of no-confidence by a majority of the faculty.
In most universities, a long-standing leadership problem would trigger a virtually cost-free investigation that would lead to removal of the chairperson or a statement of support for the chairperson. Not at ISU. Instead, the administrators paid $25,000 for an outside evaluation and unilaterally decided that the Department of Life Sciences would be split. The split wasted enormous amounts of time, not to mention additional money for office renovations and staff.
Almost from the outset, the university started reneging on its own agreement for reasons that had nothing to do with any discord between the two new departments. I suspect that much of the backpedaling was linked to the departure of Dean Michelfelder, who was the primary proponent of the split.
The upshot was that Dean Sauer (Dean Michelfelder’s replacement) did not honor the promise of a new chairperson and ignored all pleas to start a timely, formal separation of the new programs. In the absence of any real separation, the new departments were pitted against one another for Dean’s space (offices and laboratories that the Dean was supposed to allocate) and for control of curriculum. It should be noted that with an hour of hard work, the Dean could easily have equally divided the spaces and the few undecided biology courses.
Ultimately, administrators declared an “in extremis” situation, suggesting (not documenting) that the split was impacting student education. If the split was negatively affecting student education, it should have been abandoned. However, all evidence suggests that students benefited. In Life Sciences, the department seminar became the best it has been in 20 years, there were innovations such as a special laboratory section for pre-professional students, learning communities received more attention, new biology concentrations were proposed, and professors voluntarily carried heavy teaching loads to build new programs. Ecology and Organismal Biology initiated a merger with Geology and Anthropology to form a new Department of Environmental Sciences. To my knowledge, no course was hurt as a result of the split.
In truth, the “in extremis” declaration was simply a way to cover administrative incompetence. After five years of wasted time and money, the original biology department was reconstituted; minus the chairperson who originally received the vote of no-confidence.
Biology will survive at ISU, but the university’s reputation for integrity is “in extremis”. Wouldn’t it be refreshing, just once, for a highly paid administrator at ISU to take personal responsibility for a poor leadership decision?
— Jim Hughes
Terre Haute
SS recipients do contribute
Concerning the letter from Ann McCammon published April 20:
Mrs. McCammon, maybe you were the one who had “a poor high school teacher” or “perhaps you just didn’t learn”. Social Security was intended to be “a retirement supplement”, but it is NOT a welfare program.
My wife and I are retired also. Social Security is paid into by the American worker and various companies. You notice I said “paid into”, not completely funded by but nevertheless paid into. Welfare recipients contribute “nothing” to the economy, nor to the welfare fund. They simply receive.
I do agree with you that we need less welfare giveaways that the “liberal Democrats” are so fond of forcing on the American public. Unfortunately, too many people are forced to rely on their Social Security as their primary income.
— Joe DeLorme
Clay City
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