In which I complain about how I and my kind are treated

A week or so ago I noticed that every time I went to the College's website there was a picture of some woman and a notice of the talk she was going to give at the College (I don't remember who it was or what was the nature of her talk). Day after day I saw the same announcement, and I thought, what an effective means of advertising, I'll have to try that the next time my department brings a speaker in. Well as it happens, today we have Gretchen Morgenson, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, coming to speak as part of our annual Finance Symposium (Breidenbaugh 201, 6:00 p.m. - be there or be square). Our department secretary called the PR people and website people to try to get some action. What we got was, I think, a modest announcement web page that lasted a day or two, and now a formulaic announcement on the department web page that is guaranteed to attract no attention or interest. Maybe others saw our ad on the home page, but I never did. Typical, I thought - it seems that there are certain individuals and departments on this campus that get a lot of attention from the College, the PR people, and so on, and the rest of us not so much. Fits a pattern of a general neglect of our department, which I'll take this opportunity to gripe about. To whit:

Economics is the most quantitative of the social sciences. We teach three courses (a total of six sections) per year devoted entirely to quantitative methods, we integrate quantitative methods in most of our other courses, and we just hired an experimental economist. Yet we have no dedicated economics lab. The Computer Science Department (located on the 2nd floor of Glatfelter) has a beautiful dedicated computer lab right across from our department offices on 1st floor Glatfeter. We teach our quantitative courses in a variety of labs across campus - the labs that we share with political science and other departments on 2nd floor Glatfelter when we're lucky, frequently at Masters Hall, sometimes in the ES department labs. None of these are ideally suited to our purposes. We've always gotten moral support from higher ups for a lab, but when it comes to ponying up money and space, we've never gotten anywhere.

We identified a room on 1st Glatfelter that would be ideal for a lab, but that idea was nixed. Management (4th floor Glatfelter) has dibs on that room. We have one classroom on 1st Glatfelter that seems to be dedicated to teaching Economics courses, but apparently we share the other classrooms on our floor with Africana Studies (2nd floor) and other departments. As a result we keep getting our classes bounced from rooms that are most suitable to less desirable rooms.

Unlike some of the science departments, we have no separate budget for summer researchers. We are able to hire a small number of student research assistants out of the regular budget, but nothing like what other departments can do. Physics, it seems, can field a softball team to challenge Chemistry - anyone want to take us on in doubles ping pong?

Every year we plead with the powers that be to let us spruce up the lobby in Glatfelter. It would be nice to have some carpeting, some comfortable chairs, some interesting lighting, some artwork. Tour groups always come to Glatfelter and the rooms here are used by a lot of outside groups, so this would help the College present a more appealing image to the outside world. No, we are told, that would violate all sorts of fire codes. Meanwhile, take a look at the lobby in Weidensall - spectacular!

A few years ago the Economics Department was asked if we would agree to move to Breidenbaugh, then undergoing renovation, in order to free up space in Glatfelter. Sure, we said, as long as you put together a floor plan that we're happy with. We'd like all of our offices to be on the same floor, grouped in "suites" like they have for most departments. We'll see what we can do, the architects said - then they presented us with a floor plan that had us split on two separate floors, with offices cheek by jowl with public restrooms, with a big ol' language lab taking up half of one floor. No thanks, we said, and English moved instead. Have you seen those luxurious suites the English Department now has in Breidenbaugh? I'd kill for digs like that!

Long story short, my department gets no respect. But perhaps it's all my imagination. Perhaps people in other departments have similar stories of neglect to offer. I'd love to hear them - do tell!