@SaloveyPeter: Some of you have made sacrifices. Some of you have been selfless. Some of you have loved ones who have lost jobs. Some of you are about to be laid off by @Yale as the university crashes higher ed as we know it.
(JKJK he didn't say that last part, he only thought it)
@SaloveyPeter: Thank you @Yale faculty for your "willingness to teach in new ways."*
*Pay no attention to the contingent faculty and graduate workers doing all of the actual work
*Pay no attention to the contingent faculty and graduate workers doing all of the actual work
@SaloveyPeter in @Yale town hall: Our first principle is to protect health and safety, also to protect our HUMAN AND FINANCIAL RESOURCES.
Translation: Our priority is optimizing your labor time. #MayDay2020
Translation: Our priority is optimizing your labor time. #MayDay2020
@SaloveyPeter says that Yale cares about the health of its students, workers, and community members. @Yale, how exactly does kicking recently filed graduates off the health plan factor into this care?
We present to you CoReCT: The COVID19 Response Coordination Team. Correct as it might be, these graphics are...WRONG. 
All this talk in the town hall about how black and brown communities are disproportionately affected. Let's talk about WHY this is the case. Hint: it has to do with @Yale's tax evasion...as it expands its infrastructure and medical footprint in neighborhoods of color in the Hill.
.@Yale administrators framing their comments in this town hall by elaborating the "hardships" of their social isolation. Cry me a fucking river. We are sorry that kicking back in mansions with your kids while laying off poor workers feels hard to you.
.@Yale Provost Scott Strobel legit just told an anecdote about self-isolation, in which he joked about calling DCS as an extended metaphor for why we need to accept austerity. #noausterity #universalextension
Time for some fact checking. There are four major sources of funding at @Yale: (1) tuition (2) fundraising (3) endowment income (4) clinical medical revenue. How about some actual numbers? Stop talking in abstractions and analogies.
Oh wait. The opaque language from @Yale is the point. This town hall is less about getting information, more about understanding the spin through which the university is going to pursue its slash and burn policies.
....unless you are a donor. In that case, listen up. DON'T WORRY, YOUR MONEY IS SAFE FROM THE PROLES!
Wow they've built a firewall to block our questions.
Provost Scott Strobel in the town hall: "We don't know the magnitude of the turn, so we just closed our eyes and turned the wheel all the way to the right."
Get ready everybody, we've come to the time in the town hall where they mansplain and richsplain why the endowment is off limits, and why we are greedy children to ask @Yale to dip into it.
@SaloveyPeter Freudian slip: "The endowment must grow. Enough to make up what we spend on it. I mean spend for it." Yeah, remind us again how much David Swenson makes?
This austerity stuff is bullshit. Y'all should know that even at Yale’s target spending rule, it has accrued nearly $650million in budgetary surpluses since 2013
Also, we call BS on "the endowment is not for a rainy day." Are they saying that COVID19 is a rainy day? It's not. It is a once in a generation catastrophe.
.@Yale can have the moral foresight to protect its mission now, or it can continue worship at the abstract god of continuing returns.
Once again, @Yale is blocking our questions while administrators filibuster the town hall with crocodile tears about how their lives are difficult.
.@Yale can recognize its remarkable privilege at this moment and spend countercyclically to preserve the future of the academy, or it can pretend that it has no money and watch higher education collapse from austerity
The cognitive dissonance is overwhelming. Saying "our first priority is public health" and following up those statements with 10 minutes of solid drivel on why austerity is the only answer.
The President and Provost of @Yale aren't imposing these hiring cuts, funding freezes, etc because of a crisis or because of a budget shortfall. They're doing it out of a commitment to profit maximization, laced with strident anti-intellectualism. COVID is the alibi.
Here's some tea on Pericles Lewis. He was up in the @Yale Comparative Literature faculty meeting the other day suggesting that grads whose diss research was disrupted by COVID should just **change their dissertation topics**
Like, sir, just go work for @GoldmanSachs. We know that's where you want to be.
Drink for every time the word "uncertainty" is used as a euphemism for "austerity," "pandemic," "disaster capitalism," or "scientific racism."
And now they are "out of questions." WHAT A COINCIDENCE.
Who knew? Only 3 people in the entire @Yale community had questions for @SaloveyPeter. Pristine leadership.
Or, wait, @SaloveyPeter said that the three (planted) questions were "all the questions I can see." So that you can see them, Peter, we will post some here.
1/ Why are you kicking graduating students and upper year grads off their healthcare during a global pandemic?
2/ How much money has Yale actually lost and what percent of its total operating budget does that loss represent? @SaloveyPeter @Yale @yalegsas
3/ What specifically are your plans to ensure the continuity of pay, healthcare, and other benefits for contingent faculty at the university? @SaloveyPeter @Yale @yalegsas
4/ What is the yearly salary (including the value of benefits) for the presidents, vice presidents, and senior deans of Yale University? @SaloveyPeter @Yale @yalegsas
5/ Will you pledge to use a portion of @Yale's hundreds of millions of cash reserves to make an emergency grant to the graduate school? @SaloveyPeter @yalegsas
6/ How do you plan to address @Yale's role in the future of higher education, given that its hiring freezes and admissions cuts will surely have ripple effects to schools with much less wealth? @SaloveyPeter @yalegsas
7/ Will you agree that for every dollar cut from educational programs, @Yale will cut an equal or greater amount from the ever-growing ranks of @ass_deans? @SaloveyPeter @yalegsas
8/ Why aren't graduate workers--a permanent fixture of the university's teaching and research functionality--involved in the focus groups you've set up? @Yale @SaloveyPeter @yalegsas
9/ How will non-TT instructional faculty, graduate workers, and undergraduates be included in decisions about when and how the university reopens? @SaloveyPeter @yalegsas @Yale
11/ Will @Yale agree to at least open up (and preferably increase) hiring of junior faculty, who are the most at risk in this crisis? @SaloveyPeter @yalegsas
12/ What specifically are the circumstances under which @Yale will end hiring and salary freezes? Please reply with hard numbers. We are tired of your abstractions. @SaloveyPeter @yalegsas
13/ Given the severity of the pandemic, will @Yale agree to pay the $140 million dollars in revenue that the City of New Haven stands to lose this year due to the university's tax-exempt status? @SaloveyPeter @yalegsas
14/ What does @Yale plan to do with the $648 million that it has accrued through underspending? Thanks @33unitehere for the infographic. @SaloveyPeter @yalegsas
15/ How did things turn out for higher ed in 2008 last time they instituted a hiring freeze like this? And, as you contemplate these cuts, whose suffering have you already accepted as inevitable? @SaloveyPeter @yalegsas @Yale
Alright, folks. Time to blow this popsicle stand! Thanks for tuning in. See you soon, and in the meantime, stay strong, healthy, and inoculated against the schemes and word-games of the ultra-rich.
