Dear Editor,

In a recent story about student move-in day at the university, Chancellor Rita Cheng was quoted as follows: “I think there’s a renewed spirit on campus. … I think that everyone is starting to get it, that it’s about the student being successful.” There are several things wrong with this statement.

First, it’s hard to credit her observation of “a renewed spirit” in the context of pervasive unrest on campus among faculty, staff and students (especially graduate students) that has been widely reported most notably in the Carbondale Times.

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Second, her thought that “everyone is starting to get it, that it’s about the student being successful” is both wrongheaded and breathtakingly condescending. What its about, as any faculty member worth his or her salt has always known, is providing the student with THE OPPORTUNITY to be successful through means of diligent class preparation, availability to students, fair and challenging evaluation and keeping up one’s own scholarly commitment to one’s field.

This is not a wheel that needs reinventing, and to suggest otherwise is to ignore the ongoing efforts of hundreds of SIUC faculty and staff who do their work here with professional pride and dedicated effort. Sad to say, shoveling $1.5 million out the door to a Chicago public relations firm in return for yet another new logo and “branding” adds insult to injury and has nothing to do with the substantive identity of SIUC.

In a time of severe fiscal exigency, this decision suggests that it’s the upper administration that doesn’t ‘get it.’

Charles Fanning

Former SIUC professor of english and history