Dead Reckoning

The Solipsist is indignant.

Today, as we drove to work, listening, as is our wont, to KFOG, we heard the following news item: The University of California, Santa Cruz, is seeking an archivist for their Grateful Dead Archive. Over the years, UC Santa Cruz has amassed a veritable treasure trove of Dead memorabilia, so the school needs someone to come in and manage the Dead letter office, if you will. (Or even if you won't.) If you have a master's degree in library science, and you're interested in applying, it sounds like a pretty good gig: Starting salary is $52,860 (minimum), the UC system has good benefits, and, hey, you'll be right by the beach!

Does anyone else have a problem with this?

We have nothing against the Grateful Dead (indeed, the Solipsist has a peripheral connection to the band, which is too complicated to go into here). They made good music, and they are an integral part of rock and roll history. And though conservative critics will no doubt point to the archive as another example of liberal higher-education's frivolity and lack of academic rigor, we have no prima facie problem with a college assembling a Grateful Dead Archive.

But here's the thing: We work at a California Community College. You may have heard something recently about California's teensy weensy economic troubles.

Over the last few weeks, our administration has ordered the departments to cut approximately 14% of their sections from an already diminished curriculum. Adjuncts have been laid off. At least one community college has announced that it is canceling its entire summer program to make ends meet. At the UC level, tuition and fees for in-state students will, for the first time, exceed $10,000 a year, even as course offerings are slashed.

In our little corner of academia, Basic Skills, we have been without a full-time reading specialist for the last four years--problematic when approximately one third of our department's curriculum consists of reading courses. Every year, even before the budget crisis, we requested that the college restore this position, lost when the last full-time reading specialist retired; every year, we have been turned down, told there is no money in the budget to hire such a person.

So, forgive us for being just the tiniest bit outraged that, in the midst of this financial turmoil (and we can only assume that UC Santa Cruz has not been exempt), over $50,000 a year is being allocated to organize rock and roll memorabilia.

Besides, we're sure there are any number of Deadheads out there who would do the job for free. You can pay them in weed and munchies.