Fight!!!

My colleagues and I have now jumped into the political fray surrounding the proposed sale of our field site, and are frantically working to devise an alternate plan for the site that doesn't include the word "sale." A wide array of campus members (current and former students, staff, and faculty) have expressed support for our cause, which feels good. The most meaningful support (in my mind) has come from my ex students: they've written a number of letters that talk about how much they learned from our field program, and how important it has been to their education. A teacher couldn't ask for more.

Unfortunately, we're up against political bodies that we have very little experience working with. And, making things harder, some of the people we could be consulting to figure out how to interact with these bodies are the very same people who have misled us in the past regarding the long-term support for our field site, so we no longer feel that we can trust them completely. It's getting ugly here.

And, of course, all of this politicking is taking a tremendous amount of time. But if we can keep our field program, it'll be worth it.

Categories:

• science
• teaching