The Smell of Acronyms and the Roar of the Crowd

In my salad days a Broadway hit went by the title "The Roar of Greasepaint and the Smell of the Crowd."  For the entirely unschooled, let me note that the title was a play on "the smell of greasepaint and the roar of the crowds," an old theatre line of foggy origins.

My play upon a play on words refers to George Mason University's hasty name change for its law school:

Too late to avoid going viral in the blogosphere, university big wigs hastily changed the name to the Antonin Scalia Law School.  The crowd is still roaring, despite the rapid edit.

My own institution very recently took up revisions to its university wide student learning outcomes in anticipation of a visit from the Middle States accrediting agency in a couple of years.  The proposal submitted to our leading governance body suggested that the guidelines be dubbed the Rider University Student Learning Outcomes.  That is, until a wag on the policy committee pointed out this transmuted into R U SLO.

My memory leapt back to the 1972 presidential campaign --- a suitable recollection in this election year --- and Tricky Dick Nixon's Committee to Reelect the President:  CREP, which of course soon was transmuted into CREEP.  And, of course, that's just what the man was.

At times I found Justice Scalia to be a little creepy, too.  However, as an Italian-American (father's side at least... not FBI --- Full-Blooded Italian --- how's that for an acronym?), I felt some pride in not one but two Jersey boys of Italian decent serving simultaneously on the Court.

As I predicted in the Termination of Employment Bulletin that I co-author with two colleagues for Thomson Reuters, Justice Scalia's absence from the high bench is creating some interesting outcomes.  Just last week, a case that everyone expected to sound the death knell of public-employee labor unions in fair-share states resulted in a 4-4 tie at the SCOTUS, leaving the 9th Circuit's pro-union decision intact, at least for the time being.  Here's some of what I say about that in the upcoming May Bulletin:

         As we predicted in last month’s Bulletin, the demise of Justice Scalia is resulting in split decisions, divided predictably along the conservative-liberal fault line that previously produced numerous notable 5-4 decisions, such as the one declaring Obamacare constitutional.  March 29^th witnessed the first such 4-4 outcome in an important labor-law case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association [2016 WL 1191684], the 4-4 split leaves intact Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association  [2014 WL 10076847], the Ninth Circuits own summary affirmance of the trial court’s ruling.  Consequently, to get a close analysis of the case, we have to go all the way back to the U.S. District Court’s decision....

At the 43^rd annual conference of the National Center for Collective Bargaining in Higher Education, held at the City University of New York on April 3^rd through 5^th,  a panel of experts representing labor and management in public higher education pondered the prospects for Friedrichs proponents in the future. Bulletin author Jim Castagnera attended the session.

          While none of the panelists was prepared to predict who will win the November presidential election, much less who will be the nominee of Justice Scalia’s seat, all agreed that the right-to-work movement will continue to press for elimination of the fair-share requirement from state laws on a state-by-state basis.  In this regard the effort is reminiscent of the Prohibition Movement of the 1920s.  A century ago, the religious right and affiliated organizations achieved prohibition in a majority of the states, before finally pushing an amendment through the Congress and gaining the requisite number of state endorsements. 

        Just as Prohibitionists’ ultimate goal was a revolutionary change in the U.S. Constitution, fair-share opponents’ ultimate objective is to “constitutionalize” the principle that fair-share laws violate the free speech and assembly provisions of the First Amendment.  However, they went on to point out that the public-employee unions may have a constitutional argument of their own in opposition to Friedrichs-style lawsuits.  This defense would take the form of a claim that requiring unions to provide collective bargaining services to free riders amounts to a taking of the unions’ property without due process of law in direct contravention of the 5^th and 14^th Amendments.

       The only certainty at this writing is that, while a battle was lost by fair-share opponents, the war is far from over.

       I serve on the Advisory Board of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at CUNY.  If that name isn't a camel designed by a committee, I don't know what is.  As such, it has been fruitlessly in search of an acronym for more than four decades.  The "new" executive director of three year's tenure, Bill Herbert, has taken to terming it merely "the National Center."

      This in its turn brought another memory to my mind, from the 1970s, when I was Director of University Communication at my alma mater, Case Western Reserve University.  CWRU --- which suggests no 'acronymistic' word in the English language and is hard to say in a single breath --- was the 1967 merger of Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University.  People took to calling it "Case Western," which misleadingly suggested a "Case Eastern" somewhere.  We tried encouraging "Case Reserve."  Of course, the obvious solution was simply to call it "Case," but that required the demise, or at least the senility, of the last generation of Western Reserve University alumni.  For awhile in recent years the alumni magazine was in fact called "Case."  But today it's called "THINK."  As an alumnus, I'm all right with that... I think.

      Well, today is the inauguration day for our university's new president.  I am serving as a delegate to the event on behalf of Case.  So I'd best get a bit of work done before the festivities start.

      All I can add here in closing is: TGIF.