Why UMM students need to vote on the levy
Below is a letter to the editor for the University Register, UMM’s student newspaper…
Tuesday, the 8th of November, the residents of the Morris Area School District will turn out to vote on a proposed school levy. While most UMM students realize that they can vote in this election, I realize that many are unsure as to whether they should vote in this election. My purpose in this letter is to try to convince you, the UMM student, that as members of this community you absolutely should vote in this election, and that its outcome will have a direct and powerful impact on your experience as UMM students, and the experience of students to come.
Of the many reasons why students should care deeply about the outcome of this election, I think the starkest is also one of the simplest: the quality of the Morris Area schools has a profound and direct effect on the quality of UMM’s faculty and staff. As Peter Wyckoff said in his recent piece for The Counterweight
Let’s say you are not moved by the plight of my kids and their peers. You, fiscally conservative UMM student, still should vote for the levy. Why? Because the fates of UMM and the Morris Area Schools are intimately entwined. If local school quality erodes, UMM faculty and staff will leave. I, for one, love UMM. The one thing, however, most likely to cause me to abandon ship is if the local schools become inadequate for my children. Talented UMM professors feel this way too.
Peter’s comment focus on the concerns of faculty and staff currently at UMM, but they apply just as strongly to our ability to recruit and retain top quality staff and faculty in the future. Last year I was on three search committees: the Computing Services Director, the Digital Services Librarian, and a tenure track faculty position in Computer Science. In each of these cases, one of the first questions almost every candidate asked was about the quality of the local schools. This was by no means atypical of my past experiences on other searches, and is, I suspect, representative of the attitudes and concerns of candidates in the vast majority of UMM searches.
To date I’ve been able to respond by honestly and openly discussing our family’s positive experiences at Morris Area Elementary. If this levy fails to pass, leading to the deep cuts that are inevitable given the current financial situation, it’s going to become much harder to answer those questions, and consequently harder to recruit quality people. So the risk of Peter and others like him leaving is a double hazard: Not only do we lose great people, but we run the risk of being unable to replace them with equally great people.
Communities are complex creatures, with subtle and deep connections. As UMM students you are, obviously, important and powerful members of the UMM community. What is not always as obvious, however, is that you are also important and powerful members of the Morris community. Your choices affect the larger community, and the choices of the community affect you.
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November 9th, 2005 at 21:05
I hear via Pharyngula that congratulations are in order. Good work Phi on advancing civilization in Morris. The world is a better place because of people like you and Paul and everyone else who worked hard for this.
November 9th, 2005 at 21:53
Many thanks! The levy did indeed pass, and by a reasonable margin, and we are all most pleased. Now we take a short breather and then get the gears moving again, as half our school board is up for re-election next fall and it would be nice to replace a few of them.