Layoffs did occur in Public Health student
services
There is an important error in the Daily Bruin article
“Layoffs cause commotion at School of Public Health,”
(News, Mar. 5). The article states that Diane Porter, associate
dean of administration, said ” … no workers employed in
student services were laid off.”
This is not true. Linda Rosenstock, the dean of the School of
Public Health, announced her reorganization plan on Feb. 1. The
plan specifically cuts the dean’s student services from four
to two people. On that date, the dean eliminated the position of
the director of student services, laying off a highly experienced
staff member. On July 1, a second student services staff member
will be reassigned out of the central student services office.
Furthermore, the dean eliminated other major positions in units
that have great impact on both our student and research support
services, including the director of computer services, the director
of laboratory services and the director of personnel. These
positions, and the valuable employees previously occupying them,
have been essential to the effective operation of the School.
All of us in the School knew some type of budget cut had to be
made. However, the SPH faculty had no prior knowledge of the
decisions to eliminate specific individuals announced by the dean
on Feb. 1. The decisions have been destructive to both the morale
and the academic functions of the School of Public Health.
Roberta Malmgren, Ph.D. Adjunct assistant professor
Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health
Conservative outlook on economy not so
great
I regret letting attacks ““ on five words in a subordinate
clause on a point entirely peripheral to my Viewpoint argument
““ draw me into disputes about economic issues that can be
done no justice in letter-to-editor soundbites. Those words
reflected my exasperation with right-wing politicians ““
including the current Bush ““ who justify relentless
incursions on the health of our environment and the survival of our
wilderness, massive transfers of public wealth to weapons makers,
limiting social services in order to provide tax-breaks for the
already wealthy, and disempowerment of ordinary workers, all on the
grounds that their “business-friendly” policies provide
a rising tide that lifts all boats. This put a heavy burden of
proof on them to show economic results that compensate for their
repressions and inequities. They are very far from meeting that
burden.
Professor Theodore Andersen, great slayer of all he deems
“attempts to mislead,” now claims “the greatest
expansion in modern history occurred in the1982-2000 period. Aided
by the Reagan tax cut, and despite a period of inventory
liquidation in 1991, employment rose by 36 million over the 18
years.”
You need your little Reagan-worship decoder ring to discover
what this really means. While the super-rich got super-richer,
the economy as a whole was suffering badly as the Reagan-Bush era
ended, and then boomed during the Clinton years (1992-2000). That
convenient 18-year lumping allows Andersen to hide the fact that,
while most of those years were under Reagan-Bush, most of those
jobs were created under Clinton.
Furthermore, Reagan-Bush also left us with by far the largest
federal deficits in history, which became the largest federal
surplus by the end of Clinton’s term, and then was
effectively squandered back into deficit again under Bush II, long
before Sept. 11. Somehow Reagan’s 1981 tax package cannot be
implicated in his deficits, nor in the recession under Bush I, but
re-emerges as the cause of the boom in the later 1990s. This is an
impressively delayed reaction, especially since Andersen then wants
to credit Bush II’s late 2001 stimulus package with instantly
transforming the economy that same year.
While there are always cyclical elements at work, do people
really doubt that valid anxieties about Bush’s competence and
his legitimacy weighed on investors’ minds in the summer and
fall of 2000?
The other new attack is so self-contradictory and counterfactual
that it hardly merits reply. Christopher Bocchiaro, a graduate
student in physiological science, demands that I “allow the
professionals to tell the history of the economy,” and then
gives his own economic analysis. He mocks Al Gore’s claim to
be “inventor of the Internet” ““ a claim which,
incidentally, Gore never made ““ and then makes the claim he
himself has just dismissed the basis for holding Gore somehow
personally responsible for the collapse of the dot.com industry.
Bocchiaro also asserts that the “largest political
beneficiary” of Enron donations is Gray Davis; I thought
Enron’s gifts of over half a million dollars to Bush might be
“larger” than their gifts of less than a hundred
thousand to Davis, but I guess that’s why I’m not an
economic professional.
Robert Watson Professor of English