--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Archer" <r...@...> wrote: <snip> > There seems to be a lot of speculation here. Doug (Buck) > mentioned something about Bevin using the word "survive" > and all of a sudden we're spinning out scenarios about > the complete dismantlement of MUM, top people walking > away with lots of cash, etc.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. This is the kind of situation where Curtis's "epistemic humility" mantra should be taken to heart. This is all Buck said: "Bevan insturcts faculty and staff that MUM is just to survive, tighten up & Don't do anything new. This was the mission laid out by Bevan the other day in tele conferance meeting that he called in to from somewhere." He doesn't even give us a source. Did he hear this from someone who was *at* the meeting, or was it not firsthand information? If not, how many people did it go through? And how reliable are they? Was it somebody's *impression* of what Bevan was saying, or did Bevan make it explicit? > Does anyone know if MUM is actually in more serious > financial trouble than it has usually been over the years? Even if we assume Buck's report accurately represents what Bevan said, how many organizations/businesses-- including universities--in the past couple of years do we suppose have had a similar "mission" laid out for them as the appropriate approach to weathering the recession, to keep them *out* of serious financial trouble, to *ensure* their survival? That said, that MUM is on the way out is a perfectly reasonable speculation. Even the notion that folks will be walking away with the profits isn't all that unreasonable. But based on how little we actually *know*, we could with equal justification speculate that MUM was in a position to get through the economic slump as long as it was careful with its finances; and that nobody was planning to enrich themselves with ill-gotten gains.
