Post-Super Tuesday Downer

A big "yay" that Hillary took California. Still, today is a big disappointment. A super big disappointment. Our faculty search was canceled today, about two hours before I was slated to call our short list candidates to schedule on campus interviews. The committee met two days ago to rank our top 4, a colleague and I took the files over to the Dean to review that evening, he brought them back yesterday with the okay to go ahead, and then this morning our provost lowered the boom on a good portion of the lines the University had approved for this year. All this would be only slightly miserable news, except for the fact that this is a position that was a failed search back in 2002-2003, and then last year, when this position should have been up again, the hiring list was re-ordered so that we ended up with a faculty member in a different sub-field (whose assignment includes only one course p/semester for the next 3 years). And now, here we go again, after the committee has invested so much time and we are in such dire need of another cultural anthropologist. Honestly, I knew it was coming on SO many levels. And now for an FTE crisis and 2 years (at least) of blowing course caps sky-high. Meanwhile, the cult of assessment gains more ground every year. So much for the good energies of good people who are in the classroom consistently, still managing to publish, and "serving" the university and department. Anyway, yay for Hillary.