La Sapienza in Rome is the largest university in Europe. This isn't necessarily an advantage: the place is famous for its overcrowded classrooms, Byzantine administration, no-show professors, assistants in de facto charge of courses, massive drop-out rates, er, too many cars. In an attempt to solve the last of these problems, work began n March on a new underground car park. The cost of the car park? Almost nine million euros (six million pounds). It's being built by a company called CPC (Compagnia progettazione e costruzioni), the chairman of which is the architect, Leonardo di Paola. Di Paola isn't just an architect and businessman; he also teaches at La Sapienza. His son Marco, CEO of CPC, and chairman of ANCE, the association of young constructors, does too. Last Friday, seven tax officers spent eight hours in the relevant offices to try and see where that odd fishy smell was coming from.
While they were there they had a closer look at the documentation surrounding a recent appointment. Maria Rosaria Guarini, daughter of La Sapienza's dean, Renato Guarini, became a researcher early last year after winning a concorso (competition) for the post. The specific subject she chose to present for the exam was Estimo (Estimation), taught by Professor Di Paola (sound familiar?). The first part of the exam was conducted in the Professor's private study, conveniently situated in the same building as the offices of CPC. Later parts were held in the Faculty of Architecture, where Ms Guarini, already an employee at La Sapienza, gallantly fought for the post against two other candidates, one of whom had failed to attach a list of publications to his application, while the other 'declared but failed to present three publications'. The only person to show up for the final written and oral exams was Maria Rosaria Guarini. It took a month and six meetings to give her the post, despite her failure to publish anything at all. Her sister, Paola, has been teaching at the university since October 2006 - officially; unofficially she'd been teaching for some time before that on a tecnico-amminstrativo contract. Her partner, a geologist, also teaches at La Sapienza. As Italians caught with their snouts in the truffle sack so often say: Tengo famiglia (I have a family to support)
The cherry on the cake? The deputy dean and head of the faculty of medicine, a certain Luigi Frati, whose votes were decisive in Guarini's election as dean, has also been investigated for nepotism. His wife and two children all work, you guessed it, in his faculty.
Showing posts with label barone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label barone. Show all posts
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Friday, 21 September 2007
Language slaves
An update on the situation of university language teachers in Italy, otherwise known as lettori. The academic year looks set to begin with the usual mood of rage tempered by resignation as emails from colleagues throughout Italy relate the new attacks on the category, almost but not entirely composed of non-Italians, by the ill-educated, largely unpublished, downright stupid, short-tempered, wilfully or idly vicious caste of native professors and their administrative lapdogs.
Three emblematic situations.
In Viterbo, despite pressure from the unions and lawyers, lettori continue to be obliged to clock in, unlike all other teaching staff, because they aren't considered teaching staff, and to fill in registers and reports of their activities, unlike all other administrative staff, because what they do is teach. For the director of the university language centre, a woman called Alba Graziano who's published a couple of books on George Meredith (one of them in a series edited by, er, Alba Graziano), lettori are tecnico-amministrativo personnel, and that's that, so fuck logic and the evidence of her own eyes. She probably wouldn't recognise a language teacher if it hit her in the face (don't tempt me), but she knows enough about protecting her turf not only to force her language slaves to have their activities timed like office staff, but also to inform them that they're overpaid, under-worked and, in the face of the university contract, which presumably she hasn't - or can't - read, part-time workers, with all the effect this has on pensions rights, and so on. I don't know how much they get in Viterbo, but it's unlikely to be more than the €1,150 I get each month. That's right, about £700. Poor sods. No wonder they're demoralised.
In Rome, a colleague is told that she has to come into the university three days a week to teach her hours, something she's been doing with great success for the last few years in two days. She refuses, pointing out to the rabid barone - responsible, god help them, for timetabling - that her contract says nothing about the number of days she has to teach but only the number of hours. All hell breaks loose. Meetings are held. At the highest level. There is much shouting in corridors as short-fused middle-aged women with too much power and money face the prospect of paradigm shift. The university isn't concerned with the quality of my colleague's teaching, which is recognised as being exceptional, but with punishment and the blind wielding of power. Ironically, the stick it's chosen to beat this particular drum (and colleague) is the contract used for the short-term recruitment of professors. That's right. Professors. Sounds familiar? When it's in the interests of the university to treat lettori like clerks, they're clerks. When, less often, it's in the interests of the university to treat them like professors (i.e. when office staff get a raise and teachers don't), they're suddenly, briefly, hiked up a notch. Until the next time they ask for a piece of chalk.
In Bologna, a colleague asked to have extra holiday to make up for holiday lost through illness this summer, as stipulated in her tecnico-amministrativo contract. She was told that she can't take any holiday during the period of teaching activity. Why not? Why doesn't this contract apply to me? Because I'm a teacher? Well, yes. Er, no. But I can't have time off because I should be teaching? I didn't say teaching! So what do I do? Whatever you do, you can't have time off.
Heads, they win. Tails, you lose.
Three emblematic situations.
In Viterbo, despite pressure from the unions and lawyers, lettori continue to be obliged to clock in, unlike all other teaching staff, because they aren't considered teaching staff, and to fill in registers and reports of their activities, unlike all other administrative staff, because what they do is teach. For the director of the university language centre, a woman called Alba Graziano who's published a couple of books on George Meredith (one of them in a series edited by, er, Alba Graziano), lettori are tecnico-amministrativo personnel, and that's that, so fuck logic and the evidence of her own eyes. She probably wouldn't recognise a language teacher if it hit her in the face (don't tempt me), but she knows enough about protecting her turf not only to force her language slaves to have their activities timed like office staff, but also to inform them that they're overpaid, under-worked and, in the face of the university contract, which presumably she hasn't - or can't - read, part-time workers, with all the effect this has on pensions rights, and so on. I don't know how much they get in Viterbo, but it's unlikely to be more than the €1,150 I get each month. That's right, about £700. Poor sods. No wonder they're demoralised.
In Rome, a colleague is told that she has to come into the university three days a week to teach her hours, something she's been doing with great success for the last few years in two days. She refuses, pointing out to the rabid barone - responsible, god help them, for timetabling - that her contract says nothing about the number of days she has to teach but only the number of hours. All hell breaks loose. Meetings are held. At the highest level. There is much shouting in corridors as short-fused middle-aged women with too much power and money face the prospect of paradigm shift. The university isn't concerned with the quality of my colleague's teaching, which is recognised as being exceptional, but with punishment and the blind wielding of power. Ironically, the stick it's chosen to beat this particular drum (and colleague) is the contract used for the short-term recruitment of professors. That's right. Professors. Sounds familiar? When it's in the interests of the university to treat lettori like clerks, they're clerks. When, less often, it's in the interests of the university to treat them like professors (i.e. when office staff get a raise and teachers don't), they're suddenly, briefly, hiked up a notch. Until the next time they ask for a piece of chalk.
In Bologna, a colleague asked to have extra holiday to make up for holiday lost through illness this summer, as stipulated in her tecnico-amministrativo contract. She was told that she can't take any holiday during the period of teaching activity. Why not? Why doesn't this contract apply to me? Because I'm a teacher? Well, yes. Er, no. But I can't have time off because I should be teaching? I didn't say teaching! So what do I do? Whatever you do, you can't have time off.
Heads, they win. Tails, you lose.
Saturday, 3 March 2007
The natural order
Two friends and colleagues (lettori: if you don’t know what they are click on the label below) were summoned a few days ago to the office of a professor in their faculty, head of department and died-in-the-wool barone (ditto).
He showed them a 60-page wodge of text and tables and said that he needed the English translation within a week. You can share it out among yourselves, he added, with unexpected munificence. My colleagues glanced at each other, surprised. And with reason. This isn’t the place to provide a detailed job description of a lettore post, so I’ll simply say that the translation of university documents at the drop of a hat isn’t included.
One of my colleagues pointed out that each page would take at least an hour and a half and asked if the time they spent on the work, assuming they agreed to do it, would be taken out of their annual tot of hours. Barone bristled. I’m sorry? he said, looking up. Otherwise, how would we be paid? I beg your pardon? he said.
My other colleague, in her turn, pointed out that teaching was starting this week, so that, in any case, they would have no time. I also teach, said Barone. Yes, but not quite as much as we do, my colleague reminded him. (The ratio is something like 1:6, entirely in Barone’s favour.) She might as well have added, And nowhere near as well.
Deeply offended by such insolence, Barone swept them from his room. If you aren’t prepared to do it, he announced, I’ll find someone else. Rome is full of English people. His last words, as he closed the door in their faces with that subtle irony only years of professorship can forge, were: Grazie per la preziosa collaborazione.
They behave like this because they’ve been allowed to. Italian universities work on a fagging system Flashman would have recognised immediately. It’s perfectly normal for people to work for nothing for years: typing, baby-sitting, writing humdrum pseudo-research for non-peer-assessed publication and seeing their own names appear behind their sponsors, who’ve glanced at the paper once, if that.
Finally, their spirits broken, the first few crumbs are thrown their way (a doctorate, some contract teaching, an unpaid place on an exam commission) and the rise begins. No more toast-making at dawn, no more shoe-polishing. Research! They’re still expected to earn their keep, of course, but at least they’re being paid. At least they have tenure. And look, beneath them, a lower order of creature awaits to ease their load.
Our problem, as lettori, is that we don’t perceive ourselves as a lower order. We see ourselves as equals (and often, with justification, betters). They see us as serfs. It’s a cultural problem (which means it’s also, implicitly, racist) of incommensurability and I don’t see any way round it.
Oh yes, the document they were told to translate contained evaluations of the teaching staff (a category from which we’re officially excluded), conducted, apparently, by themselves.
This is how Italian structures do accountability. (Otherwise known as trasparenza.) Aaahh.
He showed them a 60-page wodge of text and tables and said that he needed the English translation within a week. You can share it out among yourselves, he added, with unexpected munificence. My colleagues glanced at each other, surprised. And with reason. This isn’t the place to provide a detailed job description of a lettore post, so I’ll simply say that the translation of university documents at the drop of a hat isn’t included.
One of my colleagues pointed out that each page would take at least an hour and a half and asked if the time they spent on the work, assuming they agreed to do it, would be taken out of their annual tot of hours. Barone bristled. I’m sorry? he said, looking up. Otherwise, how would we be paid? I beg your pardon? he said.
My other colleague, in her turn, pointed out that teaching was starting this week, so that, in any case, they would have no time. I also teach, said Barone. Yes, but not quite as much as we do, my colleague reminded him. (The ratio is something like 1:6, entirely in Barone’s favour.) She might as well have added, And nowhere near as well.
Deeply offended by such insolence, Barone swept them from his room. If you aren’t prepared to do it, he announced, I’ll find someone else. Rome is full of English people. His last words, as he closed the door in their faces with that subtle irony only years of professorship can forge, were: Grazie per la preziosa collaborazione.
They behave like this because they’ve been allowed to. Italian universities work on a fagging system Flashman would have recognised immediately. It’s perfectly normal for people to work for nothing for years: typing, baby-sitting, writing humdrum pseudo-research for non-peer-assessed publication and seeing their own names appear behind their sponsors, who’ve glanced at the paper once, if that.
Finally, their spirits broken, the first few crumbs are thrown their way (a doctorate, some contract teaching, an unpaid place on an exam commission) and the rise begins. No more toast-making at dawn, no more shoe-polishing. Research! They’re still expected to earn their keep, of course, but at least they’re being paid. At least they have tenure. And look, beneath them, a lower order of creature awaits to ease their load.
Our problem, as lettori, is that we don’t perceive ourselves as a lower order. We see ourselves as equals (and often, with justification, betters). They see us as serfs. It’s a cultural problem (which means it’s also, implicitly, racist) of incommensurability and I don’t see any way round it.
Oh yes, the document they were told to translate contained evaluations of the teaching staff (a category from which we’re officially excluded), conducted, apparently, by themselves.
This is how Italian structures do accountability. (Otherwise known as trasparenza.) Aaahh.
Thursday, 22 February 2007
Running Babel to advantage
Like some mythological beast, the university language centre I work in is about to undergo what looks like its final metamorphosis.
Its first director treated it as a centre of power and money cow, running the place as an occasionally benign dictatorship until she was crossed by higher forces. (The disadvantage of wielding power in a feudal set up is that there's almost always someone nearer to God than you are; in this case, the Magnificent Rector, as they're touchingly known in Italy.)
Director No. 1 was replaced by a woman whose sense of self-esteem is so highly developed she was once seen stamping out of the Bank of Italy screaming, I'll have you closed! (For the benefit of my Italian readers, Vi faccio chiudere!). She stuck it for fifteen months, during which the place ran on auto-pilot.
And now we have Director No. 3, a law professor. He's going to be supported by something called a giunta. (Translates as junta: among its definitions is: Military dictatorship, a form of government wherein the political power resides with the military.) In theory, this will give him the expert didactic advice he's going to need in order to run a centre devoted to the teaching of foreign languages at university level.
The startling thing about the junta is that not a single member of it is a professional language teacher. We haven't even been asked.
Yet no one here seems to think it startling at all. This is a state of affairs that would be hard to imagine in a university in any other country in the world.
Its first director treated it as a centre of power and money cow, running the place as an occasionally benign dictatorship until she was crossed by higher forces. (The disadvantage of wielding power in a feudal set up is that there's almost always someone nearer to God than you are; in this case, the Magnificent Rector, as they're touchingly known in Italy.)
Director No. 1 was replaced by a woman whose sense of self-esteem is so highly developed she was once seen stamping out of the Bank of Italy screaming, I'll have you closed! (For the benefit of my Italian readers, Vi faccio chiudere!). She stuck it for fifteen months, during which the place ran on auto-pilot.
And now we have Director No. 3, a law professor. He's going to be supported by something called a giunta. (Translates as junta: among its definitions is: Military dictatorship, a form of government wherein the political power resides with the military.) In theory, this will give him the expert didactic advice he's going to need in order to run a centre devoted to the teaching of foreign languages at university level.
The startling thing about the junta is that not a single member of it is a professional language teacher. We haven't even been asked.
Yet no one here seems to think it startling at all. This is a state of affairs that would be hard to imagine in a university in any other country in the world.
Tuesday, 6 February 2007
How to become a full professor in Italy
a) Wait until the university in which you work as a lecturer invites applications for a full professorship.
b) Write a book of no academic value by throwing together work from other books and stealing material from colleagues further down the food chain.
c) Have the book published by the university you work for, as a piece of original research, in a limited number of copies. Say, 250. Publication paid for by the university.
d) Present the book as a publication entitling you to the position.
e) Be interviewed by friends and colleagues, including those who authorised the publication.
f) Get the job.
g) Let 247 unsold copies of the book gather dust in the office of a colleague while you stalk corridors and shout at underlings. Barone.
b) Write a book of no academic value by throwing together work from other books and stealing material from colleagues further down the food chain.
c) Have the book published by the university you work for, as a piece of original research, in a limited number of copies. Say, 250. Publication paid for by the university.
d) Present the book as a publication entitling you to the position.
e) Be interviewed by friends and colleagues, including those who authorised the publication.
f) Get the job.
g) Let 247 unsold copies of the book gather dust in the office of a colleague while you stalk corridors and shout at underlings. Barone.
Friday, 26 January 2007
Slow food
I had lunch today with an old friend and colleague, between exam shifts in the engineering faculty, processing students for language credits. We were actually in a hurry, so what we were looking for was slow food served fast, rather than fast food served slow, which is often the case in Rome, where even a MacDonald's queue can seem to take for ever.
We found a trattoria on Viale Marconi that I must have walked past a hundred times in the past, when I lived in the area, but never entered. Maybe because the window is full of forbidding notices saying NO CARTA DI CREDITO NO BANCOMAT NO TICKET, which means that all they accept is money in the traditional sense, something I was short of at the time. Today, though, it was raining, Lynne felt flu-ey, the bar next door was full. We went in.
Red and white checked tablecloths, walls half-panelled with wood (travertine would have been better, but hey! as Charlie might say), the tables large enough for everything that had to be put on them. No music, no fuss, the smell of well-cooked food. Nothing costing more than €7/8 on the menu. I'm off carbs so I ordered scamorza with prosciutto and some green stuff (cicoria) tossed with chili pepper and garlic. Lynne went for bucatini alla matriciana and an artichoke. Water (we were doing exams) and a basket of delicious bread (said Lynne, I couldn't touch it). Her plate of pasta would have served two. €25 (including my coffee). In just over half an hour.
Who else was there? University people, even a barone or two with their relative lackeys, a couple of pensioners eating tripe and sipping dark red wine, a trio of girls at the top of the stairs that leads down to the lavatory. There's a big hand-written sign by their table saying LUCE SCALA and an arrow pointing to a light switch. You turn it on going down and off coming up, or else. It's thanks to this kind of little saving, I suppose, that the place still exists.
Because one of the saddest things that's happened to Rome in the 25 years I've known it is the disappearance of places like this. They were two a penny. Now they're almost as rare as eel and pie shops.
We found a trattoria on Viale Marconi that I must have walked past a hundred times in the past, when I lived in the area, but never entered. Maybe because the window is full of forbidding notices saying NO CARTA DI CREDITO NO BANCOMAT NO TICKET, which means that all they accept is money in the traditional sense, something I was short of at the time. Today, though, it was raining, Lynne felt flu-ey, the bar next door was full. We went in.
Red and white checked tablecloths, walls half-panelled with wood (travertine would have been better, but hey! as Charlie might say), the tables large enough for everything that had to be put on them. No music, no fuss, the smell of well-cooked food. Nothing costing more than €7/8 on the menu. I'm off carbs so I ordered scamorza with prosciutto and some green stuff (cicoria) tossed with chili pepper and garlic. Lynne went for bucatini alla matriciana and an artichoke. Water (we were doing exams) and a basket of delicious bread (said Lynne, I couldn't touch it). Her plate of pasta would have served two. €25 (including my coffee). In just over half an hour.
Who else was there? University people, even a barone or two with their relative lackeys, a couple of pensioners eating tripe and sipping dark red wine, a trio of girls at the top of the stairs that leads down to the lavatory. There's a big hand-written sign by their table saying LUCE SCALA and an arrow pointing to a light switch. You turn it on going down and off coming up, or else. It's thanks to this kind of little saving, I suppose, that the place still exists.
Because one of the saddest things that's happened to Rome in the 25 years I've known it is the disappearance of places like this. They were two a penny. Now they're almost as rare as eel and pie shops.
Thursday, 25 January 2007
Three things wrong...
The art critic Federico Zeri claimed there were three things wrong with Italy: the Mafia, the Vatican and the University. I don't have any personal experience of the first (though I know someone who did, and I'll get to his story later), nor direct personal experience of the second, which is strictly extra-territorial, though you wouldn't think so from the traffic jams along the Tiber embankment every Wednesday or the almost daily presence of God's ferret on the TV news. But the University? Right on, Federico!
I've been what's known as a university lettore for25 years, and in litigation for 23 of them. During that time, I've been sacked, redefined, demoted, been prevented from working in the absence of a contract, been obliged to continue working in the absence of a contract. I've been told by my superior that I belong to a category that ought to be exterminated, and that I will be 'made to pay' for arguing. I've been threatened with unspecified 'measures' for taking time off to attend my father's funeral. I've been propositioned by students of both sexes, and resisted (honestly). I've been promised publications that have never appeared and had more prestigious publications ignored or patronised. I've been treated like shit by just about every other university category, including students, in one way or another, except maybe the cleaners.
Zeri probably didn't even know that lettori exist. Because, of course, we aren't the problem.I was talking earlier about the way Italy imports words for concepts it doesn't really want to handle too closely. The corollary of this is that dozens of Italian words exist for which there is no real translation, words that sink their roots deep into the humus of the culture and won't be dug out. Qualunquismo. Menefregismo. Furbizia. Clientilismo. I don't know what bilingual dictionaries do with these words, but if you wanted to explain them through context the Italian university wouldn't be a bad context to start from. But maybe the best way in would be the word barone. It looks and sounds like baron, but is used to describe a certain kind of university professor. The feudal implications, needless to say, aren't accidental.
But this deserves a post of its own.
I've been what's known as a university lettore for25 years, and in litigation for 23 of them. During that time, I've been sacked, redefined, demoted, been prevented from working in the absence of a contract, been obliged to continue working in the absence of a contract. I've been told by my superior that I belong to a category that ought to be exterminated, and that I will be 'made to pay' for arguing. I've been threatened with unspecified 'measures' for taking time off to attend my father's funeral. I've been propositioned by students of both sexes, and resisted (honestly). I've been promised publications that have never appeared and had more prestigious publications ignored or patronised. I've been treated like shit by just about every other university category, including students, in one way or another, except maybe the cleaners.
Zeri probably didn't even know that lettori exist. Because, of course, we aren't the problem.I was talking earlier about the way Italy imports words for concepts it doesn't really want to handle too closely. The corollary of this is that dozens of Italian words exist for which there is no real translation, words that sink their roots deep into the humus of the culture and won't be dug out. Qualunquismo. Menefregismo. Furbizia. Clientilismo. I don't know what bilingual dictionaries do with these words, but if you wanted to explain them through context the Italian university wouldn't be a bad context to start from. But maybe the best way in would be the word barone. It looks and sounds like baron, but is used to describe a certain kind of university professor. The feudal implications, needless to say, aren't accidental.
But this deserves a post of its own.
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