Ohio State – DAN DIPIERO

The One Percent at OSU

Last year I made this booklet to try to get the word out about the Institute for Policy Studies report that ranked Ohio State the #1 most unequal public university in the country. The report shows the clear connection between high student debt, low faculty wages, and the extreme increase in administrative pay (combined with the expansion of university facilities).

I am posting it here, simply because I have not done so until now.

I wrote this with the suspicion that many of the undergrads at OSU do not understand what’s going on–in other words, that it is not just a “fact of life” that college is expensive, but it is rather the direct result of a series of decisions designed to benefit administrators rather than teachers and students. It doesn’t have to be this way, and it is not in much of the world.

Unfortunately, my printing privileges only go so far, and I was not able to flood campus with these. If anyone is inclined, I would be appreciative if you could print and distribute as much as possible. Please also feel free to email me if you’d like to make changes to the text; perhaps if there is enough interest, I will make a general version that is not OSU specific.

(If you do want to print this, make sure to print on both sides, with the “flip short edge” option.)

Two Updates

1. Two of my short rants have been published as letters to the Dispatch and Lantern. (There is a grammatical error in the Lantern piece, which I claim no responsibility for.) I very much suspect that the vast hordes of undergraduates at my school don’t really know what’s going on; they take student debt–and indeed the idea of paying for an education–as a given fact. My hope is that engaging the entire student body in a conversation will make it apparent that this isn’t a natural state of affairs; it’s a specific structure that benefits specific people: only those at the top, and never students or teachers.

2. I have added four (4!>!()!?) bonus tracks to my weird solo project.

Thank you for listening.

Comparative Studies Departmental Conference

Hello.

If you are around and inclined, there will be a departmental conference on April 17. My brother made the poster:

This will be a nice opportunity to see the various things Comparative Studies people are getting into, as the conference is just meant as an opportunity to present some of the work that’s been done this year. I’ll be speaking on political art and “Blurred Lines”. As usual, the paper with footnotes will appear here afterwards.