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Page 2Fighting For a Fair Risk-Free Austerity Budget From November 2011 to January 2014March 4, 2018, 9pm |
Exit Through the Gift ShopAs a final show of good faith – with the uncertainty of large unreimbursed surgical bills still hanging over my head – I gave a large sum of money to the Annual Fund under the Free Since 1859 campaign, and I did everything I could to urge others to do so. I will remain proud of being a Cooper Union alumnus, as someone who attended the college "when it was free." I will be sponsoring an annual trip to Peter Cooper’s grave, on the third Sunday of every April, to watch him spin. I am not going to direct funding to the engineering school, the art school, or the architecture school, or give money to the Annual Fund or the Capital Campaign. But I am going to find some way to keep the Library, its librarians, and the digitization of the Cooper Archives alive. The trustees have killed off Peter Cooper’s legacy, but I will not let them kill off the truth about who Peter Cooper was and what The Cooper Union was. That is my exit pledge. Read the entire post-mortem here.
Barry Drogin BEE ’83 MEE ‘86 The Alumni Pioneer was a virtual newspaper with breaking news stories and links to analyses, sources and the media. It is now an archive. Some personal musings by Barry Drogin after January 12, 2014, can be found here. Links |
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Master Plan Cover-Up$40M isn't that much money, especially not when you're sitting on over $500M in real estate. In the grand game of "what if?" and hindsight, pointing to the failure of each of the six components of the Master Plan as the cause of the Cooper Union financial crisis has always been the preference of those with a personal philosophy of what's wrong with The Cooper Union, with higher education, or with the country as a whole. But the fact is, if just one of those six components hadn't failed - if we just had another $40M (give or take $10M) sitting in our endowment - Robert Bernhard wouldn't be struggling so hard to divert attention from the failure of his Master Plan, because there wouldn't be much of a financial crisis at all, and the Board could have kept lying to the alumni, the students, the faculty, and the world. The over-investment in hedge funds in 2008? John Michaelson can switch to percentages all he wants, but the loss of over $30M in the crash would have left enough cash in the coffers to eliminate the need for a cover-up. Move from 51 Astor Place over to the site of the old Hewitt Building? The delay in the construction of 51 Astor Place, and the decision of NYC Finance to cut the PILOT on the site to 50%, cost Cooper $2M per year - at 5% interest, the equivalent of $40M. The Capital Campaign? Not only did it fall $50M short of its goal, but another $40M is in bequests - money Cooper won't collect until the donors die. The Annual Fund? Here's where the accounting gets so fishy, because, after 2000, large gifts are automatically diverted from the Annual Fund to the Capital Campaign, either to the Building Fund or into the unrestricted endowment. Resources are diverted from small donors - the annual Dinner Dance actually loses money, while Urban Visionaries is more and more successful each year - and - except for the Phonathon - most alumni mailings concentrate on the Building Fund, not the Annual Fund. The takeaway is that alumni participation in The Annual Fund undoubtedly didn't drop from 40% to 20%, and that Annual Fund giving may well have risen from $2M/year to $4M/year - again, equivalent to $40M - if Campbell & Co. hadn't decided to de-emphasize small-donor giving. The New Academic Building? The rush to build - paired with the actual cost of Foundation Building renovations - went over-budget by at least $40M, much more depending on how far back you go in the history of cost estimates. That Cooper ended up with less square footage, that there is an untold story of the fight to get the "modern" building to support modern educational telecommunications, and that, despite the energy savings, the annual cost of running the building is apparently higher than running the two buildings it replaced, only adds to the burn, which is why it is a favorite whipping boy of most critics. Finally, the rising cost of higher education? The Master Plan called for reductions in the operating budgets, but this isn't possible in an enviroment where secretaries are laid off and replaced with higher-paid assistant directors and directors, all with benefits. The empire building - which extended to the Board of Trustees themselves and their high-priced support staff, lawyers, hedge fund managers, real estate brokers, bankers, and the like - easily added $40M in losses to Cooper's bottom line in the past decade, if not in the past four years alone. Why $40M? That's enough to get Cooper to 2018, as this analysis shows. Six times $40M? That's a quarter of a billion dollars, or half the value of Cooper's real estate portfolio. That much loss cannot be covered up. But that's why the Cooper Union Board of Trustees would rather the world not know the names Robert Bernhard, Ron Drucker, Mark Epstein, William Sandholm, John Michaelson, or Sandra Priest Rose. Much preferable to pay over a half million dollars per year to folks like Dr. George Campbell and Dr. Jamshed Bharucha to take the heat and act like they are in charge. Quarter billion cover-up? More like a quarter billion fuck up. |
Fan MailThe Alumni Pioneer also established this Facebook policy on December 18, 2012. Now that it is an archive, alumni are asked to please refrain from communicating directly with the publisher about Cooper matters. Info about this website: Not Nice Music went out of business in 2008. Cassandra's Curse is one of several Internet Books available on the Not Nice Music website, in addition to some other special collections, such as the September 11 Page. Aside from being an archive, the Not Nice Music website is currently primarily a fan site for the Publisher's young son, who has a full-tuition scholarship to the National Dance Institute program (see, there is free after-school education for elementary and middle school students, too!). This content is not a publicity stunt for Not Nice Music or Cassandra's Curse. Info about the publisher: Here's a Cooper-focused page about the Publisher of The Alumni Pioneer.
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This editorial is slightly updated from the version printed on April 10, 2012.
In March of 2012, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show joked about Obama’s vocal support of a Libya no-fly zone, “Mr President, you don’t even think enough of us to lie to us.” We know that our leaders have to make hard decisions, and we prefer it when they stretch the truth to make us feel better about compromises or deals. If you play golf with the President, you give him a mulligan.
The president of The Cooper Union is not elected, he is paid a salary that is demonstrably too high and tasked with convincing wealthy philanthropists to donate money and with overseeing a staff, budget, and investment portfolio that will ensure the college’s continued existence. Cooper presidents have typically kept their distance from most faculty, staff, students, and alumni and, as long as Cooper continued its mission and its excellence, everyone was comfortable with the chain-of-command. Jamshed Bharucha came to Cooper with an academic agenda and was faced with a financial crisis he didn’t cause. Under normal circumstances, the president would have replaced top management with a staff of his own picking, instituted some tough changes, and been forgotten along with other former Cooper presidents.
The Alumni Pioneer has taken the position that Jamshed Bharucha is a symptom of the problem, not a route to the solution. We understand that Bharucha has endeared himself to many, but when the Board reverses its announcement of tuition at Cooper and finally enforces an austerity budget at Cooper (the austerity budget we were promised at the end of 2008 that was ignored for three years under Bharucha’s predecessor), it will be a shock if Bharucha is remembered in a decade as the president who saved The Cooper Union. Consider his record:
The Alumni Pioneer sincerely hopes that the tuition freight train is derailed, and that The Cooper Union will emerge from this financial crisis with its mission and its excellence intact. We understand that, by taking a public anti-Bharucha stance, we may have alienated some members of the community who, for whatever reason, like Bharucha. But, in our opinion, and for the reasons stated, we feel Jamshed Bharucha ran out of mulligans a long time ago, and this website will remain as a corrective to future Cooper historians.
There are several websites which, once set up, are self-running. But these alumni have gone out of their way to give time to the cause.
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Karina Tipton , CE '99, Brown and Caldwell and Tiny ChoicesModerates alumni LinkedIn group and Cooper Union Commons |
| Sean Cusack , BSE '98, Learnosaurus and eruciformTweets meetings and links, created Cooper Union Task Force and wiki |
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Rocco Cetera , CE '99, PANY/NJLong-time organizer of alumni events |
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Kerry Carnahan, CE '00 Organizer, FREE COOPER UNION! A Community Summit |
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Henry Chapman, A '11 The force behind the Save Cooper Union Without Tuition petition |
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Xenia Diente , A '99, DDC Percent for Art liaisonThe brains behind the outfit, rumored to have undue influence on Rocco |
Top speakers at the Community Summit. Click on their pictures to see YouTube videos of their presentations.
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Kevin Slavin, A '95, Transparency |
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Ben Degen, A '98, Guiding Principles |
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David Gersten, AR '91, Removing Barriers |
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Barry Drogin, EE '83, Revenue and Analysis |
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Richard Stock, Professor, Overview of Expenses |
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Peter Buckley, Associate Professor, Institutional Governance |
 April 26, 2012: Rocco Cetera CE '99, Richard Stock (faculty), Sarah Crowe A '12, Day Gleeson (faculty), Yuri Masnyj A '98, Litia Perta (faculty), Toby Cumberbatch (faculty), Peter Buckley (faculty), David Gersten AR '91, Sangu Iyer CE '99, Karina Tipton CE '99, Tom Synott (faculty), John Leeper AR '85 (Friends of Cooper Union) |
 December 9, 2012: Victoria Sobel, Jakob Biernat, Tyler Berrier, Tyler Paige, Kristi Cavataro, Jon Cuba, Peter Cooper, Aaron Fowler, Josiah Ellis, Joe Riley, Aaron Graham, Casey Gollan (The Cooper 11) |
May 8, 2013 Sit-In: To help provide suppers to the students occupying the President's Office, provide money at Occupy Cooper: Alumni Dinners.
Page 2 features lighter (but no less serious) fare: a "translation" of Bharucha's Back-to-School e-mail, a poem by Barry Drogin, a collection of Alumni Pioneer nicknames, a collection of professorial quotes from The Cooper Pioneer, and the mysterious Rosebud, plus games and funny papers. Enjoy!
Click for larger pictures
Stephen Doyle's Foundation Building with Penguins, circa 1980 |
Alyssa Davis's New Academic Building, 2012 |
 It's a lemon! |
 Do Not Shake! |
Free, by Scott Lerman A '81 (click for full image) |
GAMES
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Take your frustrations out on Jamshed |
Looks like Mark Epstein |
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On December 5, we met in a summit to ensure a free Cooper Union.
I am no more intelligent, motivated, or creative than anyone else in the Cooper Union Community. Cooper Union students have been, are, and will be the most valuable and valued asset of this school. The faculty have been, are, and will be the most self-sacrificing, knowledgable, and forward-thinking educators in the country. The alumni have been, are, and will be the most generous, professional, and devoted alumni of any alumni in the world. Let no one doubt the excellence of these students. Let no one question the wisdom of this faculty. And let no one underestimate or plan on these alumni to not rally around the institution that was, that is, and that will be The Cooper Union. - Barry Drogin, written 12/2/2011, mic check Peter Cooper park 12/7/2012, Washington Square Park 12/8/2012
All content posted in Cassandra's Curse, including this page, are copyrighted, but there are links to non-copyrighted files under the Page 2 Fare section.
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Cassandra's Curse Copyright © 1993, 1996, 2007, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018 by Barry Drogin - All rights reserved
