–Tuka Al-Sahlani

SeeThroughNY.net is aptly named. I first came across this site when faculty and students signed the GC Statement of No Confidence back in November. The site was circulated among smaller student messaging groups or individually to encourage more signatures. The site came with an implicit message of, “Hey, look at how much admin is making and look at what they give us.” But, although the site is a non-for profit entity that allows transparency of wages, I think using it to compare pay is using it at its minimal function. Exploring the site for this class, and thinking of what is legible, I was drawn to the different categories such as benchmarks, waivers, and NYS budget. I think what is legible is that financial literacy is not a common literacy afforded or taught to many of our students nor to us. Browsing, my questions were: 1) Looking at the payroll, what are the demographics of these individuals? What is their education? How many years of service have they had? 2) Looking through the NYS Budget, I wondered, what are the policy changes that impact the budget? Or, have they impacted the budget significantly?. 3) Viewing the benchmarks, I couldn’t find Queens for property taxes and wondered, how much civil knowledge do we really have?  Overall, I think what was legible from browsing this site is that although the site intends and is framed as a public resource to help the public, the public does not necessarily have the literacy required to analyze the information present. ( I say public because they state: Our mission is to make New York a better place to live and work by promoting public policy reforms grounded in free-market principles, personal responsibility, and the ideals of effective and accountable government. The use of the phrase “personal responsibility” makes me think this is for the public.)

Deep sigh when looking through the budgeting documents because as a Site Director for a NYC Early Education Center, I have had to create and implement a budget as a New York City vendor. Reviewing these documents and knowing the process, I am well aware that these numbers are devoid of the nuances of employee needs and of the unwritten subcategories. For example, “ Gifts and grants increased by $82.5 million. The increase primarily was the result of three significant one time gifts to the University from a single donor.” ( CUNY financial statement 14). What does this even mean? Who is this donor? Why are they donating? What negotiations/compromises do we as an institution need to make with this donor?

Maybe it’s my feeble financial literacy speaking or my writing instructor persona speaking, but although these are public documents made accessible, the intended audience are financial and policy making professionals. However, if we want to be a part of securing justice for us as students and employees of a public institution, we need to learn to “write” a new genre: budgets! A simple walk through of the Mellon Foundations Grantee Portal instructions proves that a for credit course at the graduate level is in order. Of course, not everyone will want to work as an administrator or write a grant proposal, but the reality is this is a literacy required for us, graduate students, to support our work in the systems of power we negotiate; and the system of monetary power is one worth learning to negotiate.

By Adrianna

For me, it was easier to engage with the 2023 CUNY document than the 2021 version. I guess that has to do with the intended audience. One is advocating for the institution and requesting money from funders while the other is simply a financial audit. I noticed how funds are not distributed equitably between senior and community colleges. In particular, I’m curious to know the reason behind why there is more full time faculty allotted to senior colleges while community colleges still have many adjuncts. Another thing that stood out was that most of the money comes from the State and the students. This made me question how come is the city (and perhaps the federal government) not as involved in supporting senior colleges? Their involvement could potentially ease the burden of tuition for many students (considering that many CUNY students come from underprivileged backgrounds).

The line that gave me the most to think about when reading the 2023 document was in the Student Success section under Graduate Success. It reads, “The University will also invest additional funds for doctoral stipends to remain competitive nationally by ensuring our PhD graduate-level students are compensated to meet their living and academic-related expenses while they complete their studies” (4). Unfortunately, our funds are not enough. I understand that the university is only a “middleman” between the funders and us. However, after reading the Teagle document I wonder how would things look like if funds were distributed differently.

I’d like to hear thoughts on the 2021 version and what others made of the comparison. Also, I’d like to know about your experiences with the payroll website.

by Jen Hoyer

Looking over the CUNY budget request and financial statements was a good reminder of the incongruities between desire and reality in financial bureaucracy. The CUNY budget request reads like a piece of marketing (which it is). The financial statements, on the flip side, were prepared by accountants as a financial audit. Budget reporting lines don’t match the categories set out in the request. Requests are carefully outlined according to categories that are used to lobby politicians (and curry favor with the public) but that ultimately might not matter to the folks who approve spending. 

What this highlights for me is that a funder (in this case, the state) might agree with proposed spending lines — even budget lines that fall into seemingly idealistic or value-laden categories — but that same funder somehow doesn’t have the power to make those same spending allocations what matters in reporting. The auditor’s report has to look for bad debt, depreciation, change in assets and liabilities, etc. If the funder themselves can’t change the system of reporting to match up with how they agreed spending should be prioritized, who does? Who, ultimately, has the power to decide what *matters* in how money is spent — or, have we let “the system” have the power?

I won’t write much here about the grant budgets but would love to talk in class about some key issues these examples raise for me, such as: 

• what are the types of literacy required to fill out different types of funding requests / grant budgets, and how does that limit who can even ask for money?
• how do technological systems dictate the way funding requests need to be presented — technological systems that funders might buy into as a “simple” tool for managing grant requests, but that those same funders ultimately can’t control very much when it comes to usability. (for example.)

And finally, because this week’s readings felt…dry…I turned to my favorite tool for being creative with texts — the blackout poetry maker. Here is the blackout poetry I made from the risk statement on page 19 of CUNY’s financial statements.

Before reflecting on the content for this week, I’d like to echo and add onto a suggestion for the syllabus. I saw that Sean had a similar thought to myself when reviewing the course readings. When we begin reading about Power and Institutions, and given the tools we are using to complete coursework, I’d be interested in spending more time exploring the almost adversarial relationship between institutions, power, and open educational resource initiatives and projects. Perhaps this also could fall under precarity, depending on the angle. As a member of the CUNY Commons Team, I have these conversations a lot and would be curious to learn more about this struggle between openness and administration.

I also think it might be interesting to explore these themes in other digital spaces or topics. For example, I quickly saw the mention of AI below, and I would also be interested in engaging in a conversation about it and the way institutions respond to it.

Brie Scolaro

In reflecting through the syllabus, one component that I feel would be helpful to add, though not common in other class models, is to list a few examples of how class might look like (expectation of experience). For instance, perhaps the first 30 minutes is typically dedicated to responding individually to a given prompt, followed by peer presentation and larger class discussion. Sharing a few examples or sentences on the expectations of class within the syllabus itself can help students prepare for and anticipate activities. For folx with high academic literacy, this extra structure may not feel different – but for those that are more anxious or shy about class, identify as neurodiverse, or crave a little extra preparation time, this could help us to plan for / be better able to participate and feel engaged.

By Adrianna

I really think that the syllabus is well balanced. Judging by other comments (and my own interests) it seems that we all have certain areas that we’d prefer to discuss in greater detail. So perhaps we can get together tomorrow and reach a consensus about which areas we’d like to dedicate extra time to and use those extra readings to replace others? The disadvantage on that would be that we could lose the “balance” of the syllabus. These are just some thoughts, as you see I’m conflicted… As for me, I’m interested in “self-care” and “labor” as topics of discussion. The readings for our March 7th class sound rather interesting and I’d like an extra week dedicated to similar readings/topics. At the same time I don’t want to add extra work for anyone or deprive us for other important material.

After reading for tomorrow, I’m now curious about the problematics behind AI. I think we will be discussing that in March (looking forward to our discussion!) but I’d love to learn more about this. If anyone ever comes across any article/text that touches on this feel free to send it my way.

A quick side note. I sort of connected Data Feminism to a reading I had last week from another course I’m taking (Mad Women). The presence of a “collective we” and the embrace of pluralism really made me recall Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of Anger”.In this speech Lorde’s anger is her source of power. One of the things I enjoyed about it is that the speech is also an open door to other “white sisters” to join and stand up against racism and unfair uses of power. Here’s the link in case anyone is interested, it’s about a 4 page read.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1654&context=wsq

Lastly, stealing Jen’s closing sentence “I’d love to think more about what other formats — performance, poetry, music, visual art — might help us consider the issues we’ll be looking at together.”<—I’m 100% on board with this suggestion! It would be great if we can incorporate music and visual art into our discussions (or our posts).

One of the DH projects I admire was on today’s reading: Mukurtu. The project, as they state, is based in respect and trust. Trust strikes me the most, especially when we begin to read the privacy policies of some of our favored or widely used tools. I am a fan of social annotation and have been using hypothes.is for close to ten years. I have used it for personal and class readings both as an instructor and as a student. I learned last semester that it does not follow FERPA requirements. Although that did not deter me, it did make me rethink using it for my students. Now, as I read their privacy policy, I see that AWS is their cloud host. Now, I understand more of why they cannot follow FERPA. Last semester, I also learned about Perusall, but as a student, I found it suffocating because of the monitoring features available to the instructor and as presently stated in their policy, they do collect most data that passes their service. So, although Perusall follows FERPA requirements, it is a for profit company that will use the data as they say “in good faith”. I know there is a trade off, and that is something we are here to discuss and delineate, but at this moment, I am unsure I want to know more about  the privacy policy of another of my open source readers  and social annotation platform, Manifold. (Although, Manifold is a web-based publishing platform and its privacy policy may depend on the associated university press)

I also want to note that although I agree with Fitzpatrick’s claim about Academia.edu and support the work they are doing at the MLA Commons, I believe ,for some odd reason, people feel safer when they pay for a service. Returning to trust–many have a false sense that if they pay for a service they can trust them with their information.( I wonder about the cultural and political influences that encourage people to believe this). Secondly, in universities outside of the US, a service such as academia.edu is the only service available to scholars to publish their work to an international audience. This brings me to my suggestion for the syllabus: How does the DH world outside of the US work around power, precarity, and care? Here I am thinking of DHSI and the University of Victoria, BC, Canada, or other DH leading universities abroad. I wonder if we can find a project or paper on the international DH plane that speaks to our topic.

by Sean Palmer

My one suggestion for the syllabus is that the power dynamic between institutions and the person needs more than one week. 

The difficulty is that that relationship is awfully complicated: it depends on institutional concerns, departmental concerns, and personal issues. 

Take my position for example. After a visit from the Middle States accreditation agency (I’m not sure what to call them, if there is a term better than agency, I’ll happily edit this.), LaGuardia was tasked with improving students’ oral communication skills. Part of that involved replacing the VERY outdated tape-based language lab with a digital one. 

The college needed to hire someone to run it because they had no one with the proper skill set, so I was hired.

Since I was hired to run the new Speech Lab (later two speech labs) and be the oral communication person, I was immediately put on the committee to write the Oral Communication Assessment Rubric.

So, in institutional terms, I should have been a good fit. The personality issues, however, got in the way. At one point, about two years into my employment, my department chair said something like, “Please understand, it’s nothing personal. I just don’t think your line was necessary.” 

In fairness, this person changed their mind and we work together well now. 

But at the time, my thought process was, “How do I deal with THAT?” 

There were other issues, but that one still sticks out to me. Sometimes, someone in power doesn’t understand or respect what you do, and you have to figure out how to cope with that. 

This is why I think more time spent on the institutional – new hire relationship is worth considering. 

by Jen Hoyer

In looking over the syllabus, I’m glad to see Bethany Nowviskie’s writing assigned for week 6. I’m a big fan of confronting the reality of the environmental impacts of digital projects, and while Nowviskie touches on some of this, I’d love to see even material to help us think about how digitization, digital preservation, and digital sustainability is tied up with the climate crisis. Nowviskie references Eira Tansey‘s work with Project ARCC, which plays a key role in this conversation; I also find Stacie Williams’ writing about Sustainable Digital Scholarship really helpful, and Pendergrass et al’s article Toward Environmentally Sustainable Digital Preservation is also a great (open access) read. I think that it’s critical for us to use a lens of climate impact to bring all the nuance we can to conversations about preservation and sustainability of digital work.

In reading the introduction and first chapter of Data Feminism, I was also reminded that part of what constitutes data feminism is re-defining what constitutes “data”; we need to change the terms of “quantification is representation” by broadening the possibilities for representation. In considering the fact that systems of power can only be undone by allowing new forms of data to be represented, and new voices to be heard in new formats, I went back to the syllabus to consider the ways that knowledge is represented in our assigned readings. I’m glad that we’re listening to voices in a variety of forms (video, podcast, academic and non-academic writing; creative projects), but also know that my imagination of what forms we can listen to is constrained by the systems of power that have taught me what to listen to. I’d love to think more about what other formats — performance, poetry, music, visual art — might help us consider the issues we’ll be looking at together.

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