The Worst People in the World

There is some stiff competition, but the clear winner of the Worst University Administration Ever Award has to go to the dangerous cretins who run Long Island University, Brooklyn.

That link up there goes to the Long Island paper Newsday's website, and is behind a paywall. The LIU Faculty Federation explains this mess succinctly: 

Long Island University informed the LIU Faculty Federation (LIUFF) that it plans to lock out faculty at midnight on Friday, September 2, on the eve of a no confidence vote in President Kimberly L Cline. The faculty contract expired on August 31. Picketing to protest the lockout and use of replacement workers will take place on Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues at 10 a.m., Wednesday, September 7, the first day of classes. The LIU Faculty Federation/NYSUT/AFT represents fulltime and adjunct faculty.

The lockout is the culmination of a series of actions taken by the administration over the summer that include advertising for replacement workers, unilaterally canceling classes, and uploading erroneous materials to course management websites.

I've never heard of a lockout of university faculty before, especially one announced the week before classes start.

The reason this is so unusual, which is a nice way of saying "so goddamn crazy," is that most institutions of higher education are aware that it is impossible to function as an institution of higher education if you don't actually have a faculty. 

LIU administration is telling all of their students that their tuition money entitles them to be taught by hastily hired replacements.

Thus, on the one hand, any LIU student who demands an immediate tuition refund is absolutely correct. On the other hand, the can of worms LIU has just opened up as regards federal regulations regarding financial aid is a very big can full of very big worms. On the third hand, LIU has essentially told its regional accrediting body, Middle States, to piss up a rope.

If the LIU administration had decided instead to simply set fire to its Brooklyn campus, that would have been a more comprehensible course of action.

Disclosure, a good friend of mine teaches at LIU. But I can honestly say that this is the most utter and disgusting garbage thrown at college and university faculty that I can recall. For more on this trainwreck, follow LIU's Emily Drabinsky, and the LIU Faculty Federation site.

This cannot stand.