The lead up to Valentine’s Day this year was not the honeymoon with the American people Obama and company were hoping for. Instead, Barack Obama’s first days have been spent trying to quell public sentiment over Daschle’s taxes, the lack of transparency about the stimulus package and the administration’s inability to find a willing Secretary of Commerce.
President O has certainly been keeping himself busy. But in this era of personalized democracy, I wonder what Obama would say to Chancellor James Oblinger about N.C. State’s problems.
I think the inflated and meaningless words of “hope” and “change” would go something like this:
Chancellor Oblinger,
I write today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust your great state has bestowed on my administration and mindful of the burdens borne by the students of NCSU. I thank you for your service to one of our nation’s greatest institutions as well as the generosity and cooperation you have shown to Gov. Bev Perdue as she tightens your budget.
That N.C. State is in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our great University is at war, against a far-reaching network of hatred and stupidity. Our faculty is badly weakened, a consequence of irresponsibility on the part of the State Budget Office, but also due to our combined failure to make hard choices and prepare the University for a new age of faculty-free learning.
These are overwhelming indicators of a grand crisis, subject to data and statistics compiled by the eloquent and infallible Timothy Geithner. Less quantifiable but no less profound is the sapping of confidence across our great institution — a distressing fear that N.C. State’s decline is inevitable, and that students for years must lower their expectations.
Today I say to your students that the problems we face are real. They are somber and they are numerous. They will not be met quickly or without the exertion and perspiration of every American. But recognize this, James — they will be met.
As we evaluate the autobahn that unfolds before us, we keep in mind with humble gratitude those brave students and researchers who, at this very moment, patrol far-off dorms and toil in distant laboratories. We praise them not only because they are protectors of the University, but because they exemplify the spirit of education; a desire to find purpose in something larger.
At this moment that will characterize a generation, it is this noble courage that must dwell within all of us.
James, tell your students I have “top people” working on the University budget problem. They are working on an outstanding report, recommending the construction of 54 new buildings on Centennial Campus while at the same time, slashing the number of tenure track faculty positions in half.
This is the promise of 21st Century education: larger classes, more administrators and more buildings.
What is demanded of you now is a new era of accountability — an acknowledgment, on the part of every student, that we have responsibilities to ourselves, our University and the world, duties that we do not bitterly accept but rather seize willingly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so rewarding to the spirit, so essential to our nature, than giving our all to a perilous charge.
God bless you. God bless N.C. State. And God bless the United States of America.
Yours in service,
Barack Obama
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