IU employees deserve praise

I know in my last few columns I have taken shots at the University administration for being inept, corrupt and possibly fraudulent criminals. I do not apologize for those remarks because I believe many of the upper level administrators fit the description like the word "Machiavellian" fit Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. \nBut there is another side to IU that is also kind, helpful and devoted to students.\nPerhaps no other office on campus tries as hard as the Honors College to provide quality faculty, small classes and valuable life experiences. If a faculty member receives several unfavorable student reviews, the HC will usually drop that professor. Classes require authorization to keep down numbers. And students have the opportunity to live together, volunteer in community organizations, conduct individualized research, eat at professors' homes and meet extraordinary guest speakers.\nBut it isn't just the classes and activities that make the HC student friendly. Incredibly, it's because the HC treats students like people instead of numbers. Honors programs are sometimes criticized for being elitist, but that doesn't describe the wonderful people in the houses on North Jordan. They understand that effort and hard work are not enough; their attitude that students are more important than regulations and statistics make the HC a special corner of campus.\nAnother special place exists in the basement of Franklin Hall. With file cabinets full of records and receipts, the employees of the Student Organizational Accounts Office are the people responsible for managing student group accounts. Any former student treasurer can tell you that the three women that run the office are life savers. Not only do they know more tax law than most lawyers, they often offer candy to those trotting down to their office. They are truly special people who always have a nice comment for a treasurer bewildered by accounting procedure. Without these ladies, I doubt any business in town would accept IU student account cards.\nOf course, I could go on. There are the environmental and service staffs who work hard hours cleaning up our messes. The people in the Bursar's Office and Student Financial Aid always go out of their way to help students. And of course, secretaries and assistants campus wide are the grease of the bureaucratic cog-machine.\nI hope you are getting my point. Without these people, IU would be an academic back-water. While the elitist bureaucrats at the top travel around the country for conferences or take days off to golf, the average IU employee is at work trying to make life just a little better for students.\nSo what should you do? Try being nice and saying thank you to these workers. Try not to make messes on campus. Treat them as your equals. While many of these people do not hold college degrees, they are people too. Indeed, their life experience far exceeds most of our own.\nBut we also need to do more. We need to demand higher pay and benefits for the average worker. We need to demand that IU stop hiring chief-executive-vice-chancellors-to-the-vice-president-for-internal-affairs-to-the-Bloomington-campus. Give that money to the everyday workers of IU. This demand has to be done by students, because students are the prime beneficiaries of their efforts. So get started. E-mail or call the trustees, IU President Myles Brand and your local legislator.