Forcing lecturers to reapply is unfair
Concerning the article “Instructors rally in opposition to budget cuts in education” (News, April 30), I am writing not only to correct an error, but also to explain why the correction is important enough to be placed in a prominent position.
As a lecturer in UCLA Writing Programs, and one who took her students outside on Thursday to help make undergraduate education at UCLA more visible, I was disheartened to see the Daily Bruin reporting that lecturers “are hired under three-year contracts.”
Although it is possible that some lecturers elsewhere have three-year contracts, in Writing Programs lecturers must reapply each year. This situation hurts our individual professional development and our teaching.
Applying for academic positions takes time and effort. And because the hiring of lecturers is contingent on discretionary funding in a budget that seems to get decided later each academic year, we often do not even learn our fate until late July.
Given that many universities and colleges start classes in August, we UC lecturers with one-year contracts must either accept positions at other schools or risk having no job on Aug. 1.
This is no way to live and no way to prepare for fall classes or another job search.
LuAnn Dvorak
Lecturer, UCLA Writing Programs
Columnist misjudges power of Twitter
Nikki Jagerman’s latest article, “Twitter’s few gems make up for all its chaff” (May 7), about the nuisances of Twitter yet again lacks any kind of substance.
And this is coming from someone who happens to agree that Twitter is overrated.
But more than that, Jagerman has diminished both a worthy cause and the celebrity responsible for organizing it.
In the article, she mentioned Ashton Kutcher having more than 1 million followers on Twitter as an example of what is wrong with the site.
A responsible journalist would have followed up on this extraordinarily high number, but instead Jagerman forms incorrect conclusions that jump straight from her head to the page.
The real reason that Kutcher has so many followers is that back in April, he challenged CNN, the leader in number of followers at the time, to be the first to reach 1 million.
If Kutcher won, he said that he would donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to a nonprofit organization, and CNN agreed to do the same.
He did in fact win, giving the world one of its first examples of humanitarianism through Twitter.
This is the real story, not Jagerman’s mistaken accusation of celebrity fanfare.
Andrew Dushkes
Second-year, global studies