I've been hearing from various sources that New York state's political "leaders" are going to try to rush through a 2010-2011 budget bill, perhaps as soon as this coming week. If this is true, I have some more unsolicited advice for SUNY's University Faculty Senate, System Administration, and UUP leadership. But why put it in my own words when I can borrow from the greats?
Robertson Davies: "If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get" (Fifth Business).
T.S. Eliot: "HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME" (The Waste Land).
William Shakespeare: "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well/ It were done quickly" (Macbeth I.vii).
Abraham Lincoln: "Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle" (possibly apocryphal).
Yeah, I'm reduced to listing motivational quotations whose contexts often undermine their apparent message (and embedding a link to an analysis of a Guinness ad in lieu of an actual source for my last one!). I could add Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "fierce urgency of now" from "I Have a Dream," but that would be going over the top, wouldn't it?
Why all the silliness? Well, I'm 95% sure the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act is already dead. The only scenario I can imagine for a revival is if there's an announcement from SUNY, UUP, and UFS early next week that they've come to an agreement on what it should become, followed by a full-court press on all relevant legislators and a mass appeal to New Yorkers across a variety of media. Now, if UUP President Phil Smith cancels his planned visit to Fredonia to stay in Albany and make this happen, then I'll see some glimmer of hope. But I put the odds that all 3 organizations will be able to come to an agreement and synchronize their message at this late stage of the game around 5%.
Guinness, anyone?
[Update 1 (6:06 am): Listening to Nancy Zimpher's interview on WBFO from the 18th.]
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