Huge day yesterday. statusquOblinger’s resignation became SFN’s fourth most viewed story of the entire month in a single day. The worst thing about the yesterday’s traffic to the site is that WV Wolf’s fantastic “State of Football” piece got a little overshadowed.
As usual, our community shared some fantastic comments that are much appreciated.
Link to lead story in Raleigh & Charlotte Observers.
Correct me if I am interpreting this incorrectly – but am I analyzing this correctly that Oblinger gets a six month PAID vacation at his current high salary rate and then gets to return to the University at a lower rate – but still one that most people would love to have – for the responsibility of teaching one class per semester?
He gets to return to the University where he can then play roles on the Faculty Senate and influence decisions with a faculty which STILL has not publicly censured him after they censured and ran off the likes of Chancellor Fox, Jim Valvano, and others for what far less transgressions? (Could you imagine if Valvano had ever been caught lying and had NOT been cleared of any wrong doing after six diffferent agencies and organizations investigated his program?)
I am obviously not the only person who thinks this way. The following is gleaned from a comment yesterday by ‘sweet jumper’:
I find it ironic that V was forced to resign by the “holier than thou†administration over rumors and heresay, and the NCAA found no evidence of activity to warrant probation. Now the corruptness of the administration is coming to light and the trail leads all the way to the governor’s office. The dominoes are falling and it sounds like the FBI is going to find a lot more wrongdoing in academia than the NCAA discovered in hoops 20 years ago.
I cannot help but support the thoughts of a poster named ‘weejuns’ on Pack Pride’s message boards when he says:
The Alumni Association ought to take a firm stand against this mess and call for the firing of Nielson and Oblinger with no tenure benefits. The likelihood that tenure will be stripped is remote, but the public stand ought to be taken that it is not OK with NC State Alumni that such actions are ok. Being silent in this case is the equivalence of condoning it.
Let me tell you what is REALLY going on here – GREED and GAMING the system.
You see, retirement benefits of state government jobs are set differently than the benefits that those of us in the real world have. For example, an employee’s annual pension is set on a formula based on a certain number of years of that employee’s highest pay.
For example, when a state employee retires they get an annual payment of some percentage of their four highest years of compensation. It is NOT the last four years of service or some kind of average of the entirety of service. So, it is in the self interest of these cronies to be able to bring in as much compensation as they can for a certain amount of years at any point in their career. This is one of the reasons that the world of academia is one of the only industries where former leaders can/will remain employed in lesser roles with lesser compensation. They can ride off and build more ‘years of service’ for other various retirement benefits while sitting idly by with tenure and in a world of no demands.
So, when all of these folks – Oblinger, Nielsen, Easley – are angling for more and more money, even for short amounts of time, the impact of that compensation is not only felt by the taxpayers today but also translates into higher retirement benefits for every year of their life after retirement. Courtesy of the North Carolina tax payer.
Link to “NC State feels leadership vacuum”. Obviously I don’t argue the premise – except for the Marye Ann Fox years, NC State has felt a leadership vaccuum since the 1980s.
