Should we continue the challenge?

I’m in a very awkward position today.

And more than anything, I need your feedback about… I’m in a very awkward position today.

And more than anything, I need your feedback about what I should do. Here’s why:

For a week, I’ve been collecting pledges from students, staff, and many others who want to see Chancellor Mark Nordenberg return some of his recent $122,500 raise. I’ve recorded more than 115 pledges totaling more than $12,000 and printed out dozens of e-mails from people who couldn’t provide financial backing, but sent emotional support instead.

It all fell under the heading “Chancellor Challenge,” and with the understanding that if Chancellor Nordenberg donated at least 14 percent of his salary – $47,500 – to Pitt Program Council’s Endowed Book Fund, that all of those donors would have to cough up the cash as well.

And for a while, Pitt ignored the challenge and brushed it off with a “no comment.” But the movement wouldn’t die off, and other media picked up coverage of a story about the dozens of students and staff members here who were so frustrated with the system that they’d give some of their own money to help fix it. On this typically apathetic campus, there seemed to emerge a student body so unified that it could rally behind one issue. And the pledges kept coming in.

As a result, the University couldn’t ignore the challenge any longer, and was forced to respond.

Unfortunately, Pitt found a way to respond to a very specific challenge in a very ambiguous way. On page 10 of this paper, you can read an editorial from Pitt’s head of institutional advancement, which basically says Chancellor Nordenberg has been planning on a $50,000 donation to some unnamed scholarship fund since around the same time he got his big raise.

That editorial says the Chancellor Challenge has been more than answered, and that Pitt will gladly process the pledges associated with it, if those people involved choose to make them.

Elsewhere on that page, you can read a letter to the editor from a former student government president who is altogether unhappy with the way the Chancellor Challenge is being carried out. Jeff Alex writes that he can’t stand by the Chancellor Challenge because he doesn’t like to see the chancellor attacked.

I think I’m personally to blame if my recent editorials gave the impression that I was attacking the chancellor, for that definitely wasn’t my intent. I’ve written several times that Nordenberg is a fantastic chancellor, and that he certainly didn’t set his own raise. But I’ve also acknowledged that he is the only one who can turn it down, if only because it’s the right thing to do in a year when staff members were fired and tuition jumped 14 percent.

What was once a unified front is now somewhat split, with at least one person who pledged rescinding his offer, and a University official maybe sort of somewhat answering to the challenge.

So I don’t think I know what to do from here, and I’d appreciate all the advice I can get.

Evaluating the Challenge

The reason this Chancellor Challenge ever emerged out of one measly column I threw together two weeks ago is this: The response was absolutely unbelievable.

I still can’t get over how many people are unhappy to work here, or how many increasingly poor students are disenchanted with their schooling here. Every day when I read new e-mail from people supporting this cause, I am more certain that the system is totally flawed, and that this University needs to seriously reconsider its human values. They’ve made it into a business, but even a business can’t run this way forever. Customers and employees will leave if they’re not given more respect.

It was all of those unhappy workers and unhappy students – many of whom sent thanks for speaking up when they felt they couldn’t or shouldn’t – that caused the first editorial to snowball into the Chancellor Challenge.

But the Chancellor Challenge is a somewhat unique form of civic journalism, and if I begin pursuing objectives that aren’t shared by the vast majority of the students and staff at Pitt, then I’m pushing issues. That’s not something I’m interested in.

So it’s time for me to step back and let you decide. I’m not in this to make a name for myself, or even to make a bad name for Pitt. When I graduate in April, I won’t be entering a career in journalism, but I would still prefer if people thought of my alma mater as a good place to get an education.

So if I’m going to stick with this, I need to do it because most of the students and staff still believe it’s the right thing to do.

Chancellor Nordenberg has not made a donation to Pitt Program Council’s Endowed Book Fund, and so technically, none of the $12,000 pledged is due. After all, this $50,000 was a gift he decided to make a month before any of this happened.

Jeff Alex’s letter suggests that all of the donations should be made regardless, and I think that’s a fantastic idea. But I don’t think that generosity should be showcased in the newspaper. If these pledges had all been made regardless of a donation from Nordenberg to the book fund, then I’d be better off working for Telefund, and not trying to sponsor change.

My guess is that you can tell I’d rather keep fighting. I don’t personally believe that anything at all has been accomplished, and I don’t think the staff members who were laid off or handed measly 1 percent raises have gotten any vindication. But I need you to tell me what you think. And if most of you think it’s over, you won’t hear about it again.

I won’t do it unless there’s still a united belief that it’s the right thing to do. I need more e-mail, more feedback, and more input from all of you – with or without a pledge to the Chancellor Challenge.

The 115 people who pledged money have already succeeded in drawing much-needed attention to the problems of wealth in academia. And if nothing else, that is a success. But they didn’t succeed in convincing the chancellor to make a donation as a personal objection to that wealth.

So my question to you is: Where do we go from here?

E-mail Dave Hartman at editor@pittnews.com.