Students Against Students Against Gary Peters

In local news:

A few students from Central Michigan University’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom have created a new group of pointed interest: Students Against Gary Peters. Their interest is in protesting the hiring of Gary Peters at CMU as the Griffin Endowed Chair of the Political Science Department. Gary Peters is running for U.S. Congress in Michigan’s 9th District as a Democrat. YAF is a right-wing ideological group; however, their president, Dennis Lennox II, denies that their objection to Peter’s professorship has anything to do with partisan politics. A September 23 article in the Saginaw News quotes Lennox as saying, “This is not about partisan politics [...] Mr. Peters would probably be a great professor if he wasn’t running for Congress.”

Now, although I doubt there would be a coalition of students from YAF, ceteris paribus, protesting a conservative holding the Griffin Chair, that does not refute their argument. To denounce their point of view solely on motivational grounds amounts to an ad hominem attack. The motivation for their argument has nothing to do with the argument itself, which is where I turn my attention.

First, I must provide full disclosure. I am in Peters’ PSC 300 class. I signed up for it unknowing of the situation surrounding it, but enjoy class nonetheless. My status as student in his class may be valuable in evaluating SAGP’s claims.

Their main contention seems to be that, by working as a state employee and running for Congress simultaneously, he has a conflict of interest. Don’t state employees, such as House members and Senate members, run for other offices? This claim is not pointed enough. He is providing a service for CMU and its students, while separately running for a public position. Can’t someone have a job and run for public office? Not everyone is independently wealthy enough to fund a campaign and support one’s family. Were his campaign to disallow him from completing his teaching position adequately, I would ask for him to step down as well. But it hasn’t, so I won’t.

A crucial point that SAGP seems to ignore is that Peters’ $65,000 salary is paid for by a private endowment. He is the Robert and Majorie Griffin Endowed Chair in American Government. “The Peters Report,” a blog maintained by SAGP that monitors the every move of Peters, asserts that Peters is an “expert at living off taxpayer money.” Peters is not living off taxpayer money. In fact, CMU’s Operating Budget for the 2007-08 school year, which can be found here, lists state appropriations’ for the Griffin Endowed Chair at $0 (p.14). Furthermore, let me provide a quick lesson in private endowments. An endowment is money donated or transfered to an institution (i.e CMU) that must be invested so that its principal remains intact. The compounding of interest allows the fund to last over the long term. An endowed professorship (i.e CMU’s Griffin Chair) is permanently paid for entirely from the revenue of the endowment fund specified for that purpose. The salary that Peters is afforded through the endowment may be “cushy”, however it is one that the endowment would allocate to someone regardless of how many other professors were being laid-off or how much the budget provided by state appropriations (i.e tax dollars) was being reduced (or increased, for that matter). There is no need for the university to justify this salary or its associated costs, as it is provided in full by the private endowment. Whether or not the compensation package is “fair” is a moot issue, as it is set by the endowment.

The endowment funds the salary and associated costs of a U.S. and Michigan political expert to serve as a faculty member in Central Michigan’s political science department.

- CMU’s Griffin Chair website

SAGP contends that the job is “full-time” according to the contract, while he has said that it is part-time. YAF is splitting hairs here: Peters can reasonably be seen to have evaluated the number of hours it takes to perform his tasks and conclude it will not take 40 hours per week, widely considered the standard for full-time. It is not unreasonable to consider 1 weekly class, office hours, and the formation of a forum a part-time job, even though the legal status says full-time. Consider this: while I am a full-time student at CMU, this does not mean I have to acknowledge that my full-time job is a student. This point of contention is a waste to spend time on.

They also claim that Peters is necessarily biased and will jeopardize a healthy classroom atmosphere. This is where my attendance in class proves valuable. I can attest that Peters is not one to construct a biased classroom, nor let his internal bias subconsciously escape him. I have all too often had professors with clear, unashamed biases in class. Peters is not one of these professors. His lectures and exercises are entrenched in honest debate. I honestly have trouble determining his positions on any issue. Their contention that he could be biased really has no bearing on the discussion. Because he is not biased, there is no cause for concern.

Other meaningless claims against Peters include that he forgot where he was working, telling the Politico that he was teaching at Eastern Michigan University. In fact, the Politco acknowledged its regrettable error.

In the end, I don’t see a conflict of interest, an unreasonable salary, a professor trying to “pull one over” on the taxpayers or the students of this university, or a pattern of bias in his classroom. Not to mention the meaninglessness of some of SAGP’s other claims. I wish they would spend their time on more positive efforts, instead of playing partisan games for the political gain of their favored candidate. Surely, with their zeal for investigation they could do some positive work in a worthy area.