From Ann Arbor to Rajasthan to the Nile

Tonight I saw "In the Trail of the Ghawazee: Gypsy Dances from Rajasthan to the Nile" with Leila Haddad and the Ghawazee musicians of Luxor, thanks to a friend who got some extra tickets and kindly invited me. I was about ready to pass out because I'm so tired from grading and everything. (Okay, part of the effect is due to the fun of celebrating K&J's engagement last night!!) But the music and dancing were quite beautiful, and it was humanizing to be with friends doing something besides my everyday labor. I couldn't help but think of my friend and his research on the Gypsies of Rajasthan, though, and our informal interviewing of groupies in the audience at the Sziget a few years ago.

Yesterday I saw a lecture on the origins of domestic food production by the illustrious Kent Flannery, entitled: "The creation of agriculture: So easy a caveman could do it." Katie and I were both excited to learn about teocinte.

Contract negotiations continue for the University of Michigan graduate student instructors, via the Graduate Employees Organization. There's serious talk of a possible walk-out, depending how the conversation goes over the next couple of weeks. We've already extended our expired contract for a couple of weeks to allow for additional negotiations.

Meanwhile, there's a policy change called "continuous enrollment" being discussed at U of M's Rackham graduate school that has lots of us very concerned, to the point that the Dean met with the Graduate Student Forum today and there's another lunch meeting with the dean being scheduled for students by the GSF in another week or two. The arguments in favor of the change that were presented by the dean today centered primarily around (a) the data on degree completion from research that included both institutions that have such a policy and institutions that don't, and the apparent fact that the policy will, in fact, be revenue neutral, and (b) that the decrease in candidacy tuition will counterbalance the increase in semesters of enrollment while a candidate.

There are many issues being raised among students and faculty in disciplines that depend on extended field research in discussions that I don't want to go into here, but a couple of the things that puzzled me about what she said yesterday were the following: (1) she indicated that the cost of tuition is set by a different body than Rackham, who obviously would preside over this policy. So in principle the candidacy tuition could rise at a later date, making the argument b look rather less convincing. (2) While the dean indicated that data that include all disciplines in sciences and humanities indicate that the rate of completion of degree is higher when continuous enrollment policies are in place, when pressed by a student in the GSF with the question "Do institutions with continuous enrollment policies have greater degree completion rates than the University of Michigan?," she said that those data were unavailable, but that anecdotal evidence indicates that there are some that have better rates of completion and others that have far worse.

. . .

My neck pain is excruciating after grading my undergraduates' papers. I'm almost through all of the 75. I know I can't afford a massage, but I may need to find a way to pay for it anyway, because I can hardly turn my head. I wish there were affordable acupuncture in Ann Arbor.

I almost missed the most exciting news! My dear friend Eri just had her baby. I don't know exactly what time, or the stats or anything. But they both look positively radiant in the photos.