President Gann escorted the Kuwaiti Foreign Minister to the Athenaeum on Monday, where he was awarded the College's 50th honorary degree.

Dr. Al-Sabah was on campus to receive an honorary doctor of laws. The minister was originally notified of the honor during President Gann’s trip to the Middle East in March, at which point they began coordinating a visit to campus for him to accept the degree.

Typically, honorary degrees are awarded by colleges and universities during commencement ceremonies each spring. But as Dr. Al-Sabah is unable to make CMC’s May 15 graduation, an Athenaeum luncheon was hosted instead.

At the lunch, Dr. Al-Sabah described his alma mater as having a special place in his heart. “Let your heart float and drift in the sea of passion,” he said. “There is no love but your first love.” The sheikh had turned down an invitation from Condeleeza Rice to speak at Stanford the same day, he noted, as his visit to California was for Claremont.

Dr. Al-Sabah, 55 years old, is the fiftieth person to receive an honorary degree in the College’s history. The dignitary has already earned a PhD from Harvard in economics in addition to his BA from CMC, which he earned cum laude in 1978.

In the past, honorary degrees have been given sparingly. Until 2002, only one or two individuals were awarded such degrees each year, if any were given at all. Ceremonies were traditionally separate from commencement, which was an unusual practice. While almost always doctor of laws degrees (LH D), CMC has occasionally awarded doctor of humane letters degrees, to figures such as Marian Miner Cook and George Van Tubergen. The Board of Trustees revised their honorary degree policy in 2003, and as a result, the number of degrees awarded annually has increased.

Dr. Al-Sabah will not be the only Kuwaiti awarded an honorary degree this year. Abdulatif Al-Hamad, Chairman of the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development and another CMC alumnus and parent, has also been chosen to receive a doctor of law.

Wait, let’s rewind a bit.

Pitzer President Laura Trombley and Robert Day '65.

In case you need to brush up on your Claremont Colleges history, here’s a little lesson: George Benson was the founding president of CMC.  Though he later helped out in the founding of both Harvey Mudd and Pitzer,  Benson seemed to be the embodiment of the ultimate CMCer.  Throughout his life, he was involved Los Angeles Republican party politics; he was even one of the original supporters of President Richard Nixon.  So why have our not-so-conservative neighbors chosen to honor Benson?

It turns out that Robert Day, CMC class of ’65 and former chair of CMC’s Board of Trustees, recently donated the $3 million for the renovation of Pitzer’s primary auditorium.   When given the choice, Day was the one that asked that the auditorium be named for Benson.  However, it does not seem that Day has abandoned his love for his alma mater and changed his allegiance to our northeastern brethren.   On the contrary, it seems that the move may have been entirely for the benefit of CMCers.  Rumors have begun to circulate that Day donated the Auditorium as a trade with Pitzer.   In exchange for the major gift, Pitzer would allegedly agree to allow the new Joint Science Building to be built in the lot across from the current building, right on the edge of CMC’s campus, on the plot of land that is currently the parking lot at 9th and Mills.  This would make the new structure just a stone’s throw from North Quad, and therefore very accessible to Claremont McKenna students. Though Pitzer had originally wanted the new project to be located further north, on a plot of land up towards Mudd, it seems more likely that the new building will be built much closer to CMC’s campus.

Interior of the new Benson Auditorium. Photo credit: Amy Jasper PZ '10

CMC’s VP of Alumni Relations, John Faranda, could not confirm the rumors that the donation was a buyoff. However, he did mention, “Robert [Day] is a very smart man, and we know he is very interested in helping science.”  In fact, it is part of Day’s family legacy.  Day is actually a relative of W.M. Keck, after whom the current Joint Science Center is named.   The W.M. Keck Foundation has provided funding for all sorts of science related projects, from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to USC’s Keck School of Medicine. In other words, Day is merely continuing his family tradition, albeit in a very hands-on manner.

In some ways, it appears that Day is the epitome of a CMC graduate.  He is an extremely savvy businessman who is using his expertise in the world and his monetary power to forward a cause he feels passionately about: the well-being of CMC students.  As for naming the auditorium after Benson, this is not uncalled for.  Much of the nomenclature around all five colleges is already intertwined.  In fact, Pitzer itself was named after Russell K. Pitzer, who provided one of the crucial initial donations to get Claremont McKenna off the ground.

Fundraising is not currently underway on the project, and it will probably be years before construction on the Joint Science Center Expansion officially begins.  Perhaps years down the road, CMC students can show gratitude to Day for his contributions to science at the Claremont Colleges and a shorter walk to class.

CMC has consistently ranked between 9-14 over the past decade in U.S. News & World Report's college rankings.

For those of you who have not read the piece, the argument is as follows: Claremont McKenna’s focus on government and economics is a detriment to other departments, and it prevents our beloved school from rising into the top ten liberal arts colleges as ranked by U.S. News and World Report.  Nico goes on to equate our focus on government and economics with the lack of general name recognition.  He offers three main arguments for his position.  First, the best applicants interested in government and economics go to more big-name schools.  Second, name recognition is a factor for attracting prospective freshmen and transfer students.  Third, CMC loses strong faculty in other departments because of our focus.

Let us begin with the supposed link between our name recognition and our focus on government and economics.  I believe that other factors better explain CMC’s lack of name recognition.  We are the only top twenty liberal arts college that is under 100 years old –rather considerably under, given that our 63^rd graduating class will receive its diplomas in a few weeks.  This relative youth, coupled with the small size of our graduating classes, means that CMC has relatively few alumni. Indeed, all CMC alumni would not fill the Rose Bowl —we wouldn’t even fill one-fifth of the seats! Youth and the size of our alumni network are far more likely explanations of the lack of name recognition than diversity of academic offerings. Compare our alumni base —likely less than 15,000 —to Harvard, Amherst, or Williams.

Now let us consider Nico’s three points.  Applicants that are the best candidates for government and economics majors will go elsewhere.  Fine.  There really is no way to either prove or disprove this point. So, for the sake of argument, let us assume it is true. Dean Vos has stated that CMC’s goal is to enroll 300 freshmen (110 early decision admits + 190 through regular decision).  Relative to the pool of applicants applying to top schools in the United States, this is a tiny number.  We could not hope to attract the top students in any field, even if we put every resource the college had behind that effort.  Students pick schools based on a whole host of factors: size, weather, proximity to home, social atmosphere, city size, and family ties, among others. CMC cannot be all things to all prospective students.  The campus we offer is, I believe, different from a vast variety of other schools.  As such, it will tend to attract particular students.

Is CMC trapped in a cycle of government and economics majors, as Nico alleges?  Well, the majority of CMCers graduate with a dual or double major.  Often, those second majors are something other than government or economics.  Furthermore, those other departments are not as small as Nico portrays them. CMC actually offers more math courses than government courses (55 math compared to 50 government), and has about as many psychology classes (48) as government. The relative parity of those departments is never mentioned in his article.

As an anonymous do-gooder mentions in the comments section of Nico’s post, graduate schools and employers often know exactly what CMC is and why it is such a fantastic institution.   This comment, though I agree with it, misses Nico’s point.  His friends in Indiana had not heard of CMC, although they have heard of George Washington and USC. Nico was talking about the name identification among peers.  I agree with his analysis of the symptoms, but I disagree with his diagnosis. Age and alumni network are likely to”‘blame.”  Indeed, the school most often garners attention when our professors are quoted in newspapers (see Professor Jack Pitney), donors give major gifts to the school (Robert A. Day and Henry Kravis), or when other elements of those two departments which are “holding us back” shine in the public sphere.

In 1969, Claremont Men's stayed true to its mission, bringing in Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut for commencement to discuss the importance of service. It was the College's twenty-third graduation ceremony.

Finally, let us address this issue of talent recruitment and retention.  I am not going to speculate as to why Professor Khazeni was denied tenure.  Nico is obviously upset by this fact, and I cannot imagine that the decision thrilled the professor either.  Tenure decisions are made by the Advancement, Promotions, and Tenure committee (APT).  This committee is made up of all tenured professors of the college.  There are a variety of reasons why a professor might be denied tenure, and Nico’s assertion without basis that the professor in question was snubbed is both premature and uninformed. Since he admittedly does not know the standards by which tenure is granted, creating his own standards which show that the professor deserved tenure is not sufficient grounds upon which to claim that the APT committee failed in its duty.

Nico’s vision of a brighter CMC future calls for expanded academic offerings by hiring the best talent to other departments. This plan sounds remarkably like what CMC is already doing. Professor Bassam Frangieh did not appear out of midair. He was recruited by CMC from Yale to create an Arabic program. Associate Professor of Philosophy Suzanne Obdrzalek also was previously featured at Yale. Professor Minxin Pei, one of the world’s leading experts in Asian affairs, is now the head of the Keck Center and an instructor in international relations. One can also look to the two new professors being hired by the history department. These are just a few of many examples of how CMC invests in other departments and why Nico is simply misinformed.

Claremont McKenna cannot be all things to all students; we follow the consortium model. Nowhere does Nico mention that some students come here for that very reason. The schools divvy up responsibility to cover more ground in depth, instead of wasting resources duplicating efforts. That such a young school can excel in two major areas of study— economics and government— should be celebrated, not chastised. Anyone who does the latter did not do their research as a prospective student, and has ignored the most important characteristic of the college process: fit.

Parking lots and baseball fields currently utilize this space east of Bauer Center, itself to be replaced with a campus center. In the future, new quads, academic and residential, will take up the land, along with a new admissions office and alumni house, located on the corner of 9th St. and Claremont Blvd.

The plans were formulated based on a proposal to expand the student body from 1150 to 1400 (the maximum allowed in accordance with the College’s Constitution). The rest of the plan describes how the College will reach its “full potential.” Fear not – the sacred student-to-faculty ratio will be preserved at 8:1. But how will the College accommodate all these new students and simultaneously improve the physical campus with the “new or renovated academic facilities, a new fitness and athletic center, a new campus center, and the potential development of an Alumni House” all mentioned in President Gann’s email? These objectives may require diverse and potentially startling changes to the CMC landscape.

The plan assumes that, in order to continue attracting the best faculty and students, the College requires newer and more numerous facilities. This will be accomplished through a set of goals and objectives, which include:

• Making a clear vision for CMC allowing the improvements to strengthen the identity of the College.
• Increasing the aesthetics of CMC.
• Increasing the sense of community through greater opportunities for interaction.
• Environmentally responsible development and planning.
• Better interior and exterior infrastructure.
• Alternative strategies for meeting parking, mobility, and service needs and maintenance.

But what does this actually mean for CMC?

Bauer Center will first be the first major building torn down, to be replaced with a campus center, which will provide a real entrance to Ninth Street. “Much like the Smith Campus Center at Pomona, this central building would have an open, adaptable ground floor, and would house mail facilities, dining options and lounge spaces,” says Buildings and Grounds Commitee member Lucia Foulkes. Collins will be replaced and the new dining hall will be located further north near the new campus center. One wonders whether this will cause more South Quad residents to frequent Frary, and widen the North Quad-South Quad social gap. Perhaps anticipating this worry, the Master Plan only has one dining hall, maintaining the sense of community fostered by Collins. To ASCMC President Tammy Phan, “one dining hall means that we still haven’t grown too large,” and that there still is a “central meeting and eating area.”

This new academic building will be built where McKenna Auditorium currently stands, right outside the Flamson Plaza Fountain and across from the Athenaeum. In the distance, the new campus center is visible, where Bauer Center is located today.

The temporary offices, sardonically referred to as “Trailer Park West” by some peeved professors, will finally be removed and replaced with an eastern expansion of Parents Field. Linked with the new campus center, Parents Field will form the “heart” of campus. The athletic fields to the east will be replaced with a new residential complex – an “East Quad” – consisting of two halls facing each other around a courtyard and a series of gardens. The student apartments will be renovated, but Phillips will be demolished to make room for a Social Pavilion and Recreational Pool. The Hub will be gone as well, replaced by an academic building with a clear path to Scripps.

Of course, the Stags and Athenas will have a new place to shine. Ducey Gym will be replaced with a new Fitness and Athletic Center, and the track and football fields will be converted to intramural and club sport fields. The varsity soccer field will be moved across 6th Street and the rest of the varsity sports’ fields including football, track and field, baseball and softball will be situated in the East Athletic Expansion, across Claremont Boulevard from the apartments.

A substantial overhaul of the College’s pathways is also planned, throughout new and old quads alike. Such pathways are primarily responsible for connecting the campus and for welcoming visitors. Major axis will be redrawn to make for better navigation throughout CMC, and for clearer entrances to the College from various points. These entrances will be more aesthetically pleasing – the first of them being the Kravis Center itself. Trimming and lighting are small aspects of the plan that may have a surprising effect on the look of CMC in the short run.

Overall, these changes sound dramatic, and indeed they are. However, the Master Plan makes a concerted effort to preserve the intimate nature of CMC while strengthening the positive characteristics. “The College has done a lot of planning and group sessions with students,” says Phan, suggesting that we have had and will continue to have a voice in CMC’s future. The architecture of the new buildings will flow with those surrounding them, attempting to create an aesthetically-cohesive campus from two conflicting styles: the utilitarian concrete structures from our founding and the modern masterpieces designed by Architect Rafael Vinoly and CO Architects, among others. Pleasing everyone who enjoys the California sunshine, the plan calls for more open and green spaces round campus and gives them a practical purpose beyond mere enjoyment. The green spaces are designed for better “natural” drainage during rains.

While the changes can seem intimidating, our most characteristic features are here to stay. “It’s reassuring to know that some things will never change,” says Foulkes. “In 25 years, when some of us will have kids at CMC, North Quad will still be here to remind us of our youthful exploits.”  The buildings thoughtfully chosen to remain represent our core CMC values and culture; polished up a bit, but essentially unchanged.

Professor Bassam Frangieh, director of CMC’s Arabic programs, believes the new venture is a natural progression for the College after the Arabic program demonstrated such success over the past year. “You cannot teach the language alone,” Frangieh said. “You have to teach the culture, as well. Both are interconnected. And now the students want to do more. They are eager to go to the Middle East to study Arabic and to do internships in Arab countries.”

Currently, over one hundred students have enrolled in Arabic courses at CMC. The current program was founded just a year ago.

Gann & Wenger visited Abu Dhabi, Ad Doha, Kuwait City and Amman. Pictured Above: Streets of Amman, Jordan.

According to Frangieh and Gann, the program would be similar in structure to CMC’s DC Program, with internships attended during the daytime and courses instructed in the evenings. But the program would only be offered during the summer, for now. “We believe the success for the CMC model is to take students who have already studied Arabic here and have a way to project ourselves there,” Gann said. “We would provide housing, courses and internship opportunities” – resources hard to come by in the region without established assistance.

The president visited Abu Dhabi, Kuwait City, Ad Doha and Amman. “I think, on balance, Amman, Jordan will come out as the best location,” Gann explained. “Arabic is the main language there and the culture is more obvious than in the other cities we visited. They speak a lot of English in these other cities. And I believe it will have the best internship opportunities.”

She added: “We also have alumni support there, which I feel is very important. I’d be less excited about going into a country where we have absolutely no alumni. The other issue in the gulf is that, frankly, it’s very hot in the summer.”

Ideally, the program would start in the summer of 2011. But it remains unclear how it would be funded. “We would have to charge tuition for it, because it would be for credit,” she said. Details are to be worked out with Dean Hess in the coming months.

As a CMC program, the College would be able to hire all of its instructors, which would give it much more control over the content of courses and allow for the classes to count for credit. It would be difficult to award such credit, and nearly impossible to coordinate quality internships, if the courses were outsourced to another program or university. “We certainly can do it better and more effectively,” Frangieh noted, adding that he would be willing to go with the students to shepherd them and establish the program. “Creating a strong CMC presence abroad is not only necessary but also a requirement. This is the time to do it.”

While there, Gann traveled with Aleta Wenger, the Executive Director of International Programs and Professor Frangieh’s wife. Together they met with dozens of officials, including the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, Her Majesty’s staff in Jordan and members of the Brookings Institution’s Middle East Bureau in Qatar.

The trip came in light of increased globalization efforts made by the College on various fronts. Dean of Admissions Richard Vos recently came off a recruitment trip in the Middle East himself, and a trip to Singapore and Hong Kong took place over Spring Break for the Robert Day School. But Gann was clear to differentiate our interests in the Middle East from Claremont’s plans in Asia. “We’re looking at something far simpler in the Middle East than we were in Singapore,” she said, referring to consortium plans to found a sixth college abroad. “We don’t want any bricks and mortar; we just want to organize it as an extension of what we do here.”

So if you could, take a couple of seconds and leave a comment below with a couple of your favorite things to do at CMC and about town– must-eat restaurants, secret spots on campus, party traditions– all the things that you will remember fondly and lust for in a few years.

This can be as simple as seeing a CMS-Pomona basketball game in Ducey, or eating at Leks’s personal favorite  Red Hill BBQ on Foothill Blvd. We’ll put them together and send out a official list of 50 (or 100) things to add to your Leader’s To Do List.

Brad Johnston, struck by a sudden revelation, realized that this was the way that the Lord intended it to be. Johnston, who foolishly had believed that the plan was for his plane to arrive on time for him to catch his connection and start his three-day weekend skiing in the Rockies, became aware that destiny had other arrangements. He started the day with Delta’s flight plan and ended up with the Lord’s itinerary instead.

“I never realized or appreciate that everything DOES happen for a reason and the Lord works in mysterious ways,” Johnston remarked. “But once I figured it out, the signs were everywhere.” As Johnston walked off his plane, which arrived nearly two hours late because the first mate was unable to make it to the airport in time, he was initially disgusted and angry. He talked to the airline workers assigned to find him a hotel room for the night, silently cursing the pilot who had brought him here and delayed him from spending time with his family.

“I’m sure glad I held my tongue, because right after I left the counter, that’s when the magic happened,” Johnston beamed. As he walked towards the baggage claim, he decided to stop in the bathroom, an experience he vows never to forget. “I was minding my own business,” Johnston describes, “when I saw the Virgin Mary’s outline in the stray paper towels scattered around an overflowing trash bin.” Johnston added that the image also had a halo formed by a stray urinal cake and the sight completely turned around his night, maybe his life.

“I really think that God’s will brought me here and to Salt Lake City in particular,” Johnston noted. Salt Lake City, with its infamous restrictions on alcohol and famous lack of anything actually fun to do, is the city of the chosen people and offers very few tourist stops outside of Mormon temples and historical sites. “What else was I going to do other than check out this God stuff?” Johnston chuckled.

Unsure if he was going to be able to secure a flight the next day, Johnston wouldn’t be upset if he got to stick around a little longer. Johnston doesn’t even know if he’d take a seat if he’s offered by another passenger. “Before, all I could think of was being through all this travel stuff and arriving at our vacation house,” Johnston said. “But I realized that God made that pilot late for work so that I could see his divine plan. The journey really is the destination in this crazy life of ours, who cares if the journey takes an unnecessarily long time? Plus, the hotel room they put me up in is really nice for a airport hotel.”

Johnston hopes that his new found relationship with the Lord doesn’t end here. “It’d be really cool if God would stick around,” Johnston ponders. “The next time I’m in an insanely long line at the bank, watching senseless acts of violence and destruction on the news, or stuck in rush hour traffic, I’ll know that I’m just acting out part of God’s plan and play my role with a smile on my face.” To Johnston, traffic is no longer an inconvenience, but some kind of cosmic ballet eloquently orchestrated from up above.

In the end, Johnston can only smile and know that it was all worthwhile. “All these years, I had no idea what God was or what role he played in my life,” he somberly considers. “But now, I’m just thrilled to be a part of it all and I’m glad God is focusing on this kind of stuff and not remedying horrible injustices or stopping evil atrocities from occurring in other parts of the globe.” For one traveler, the Lord’s ways aren’t so mysterious anymore.

The first box shows the poor performance of the Google Voice transcription service (click on the image to see a larger version). The second box plays the actual voice mail he left me. As you can see, we checked the “X” in the lower right corner to indicate that the transcript was NOT useful.

Right now, Google Voice’s main functions are call-forwarding and voice mail. But how many phone lines do each of us have? One, our cell phones, and we can access voice mail with at most two buttons. Our primary use of phones is for texting and calling, so Google Voice for college students? Not terribly useful.

Possible flaws with college-age users aside, Google Voice may soon become infinitely cooler for all audiences as a result of Google’s acquisition of Gizmo5. As reported in TechCrunch by TechCrunch founder and 1992 CMC alum Michael Arrington,  the acquisition could mean that Google Voice would look something more like Skype or Google Talk, adding the all-important calling function.

#16 Best Campus Food (+1)
#7 Best Career Services (-5)
#11 Dorms Like Palaces (no change)
#3 Happiest Students (+1)
#15 Lots of Race/Class Interaction (+3)
#11 Most Popular Study Abroad Program (not ranked last year)
#10 Most Politically Active Students (+1)
#13 Professors Get High Marks (not ranked last year)
#10 Most Accessible Professors (+1)
#3 School Runs Like Butter (+2)
#13 Great Financial Aid (-3)
#1 Easiest Campus to Get Around (not ranked last year)
#3 Best Quality of Life (+2)

And lastly, the ranking that CMC Public Affairs left off in their annual self-congratulatory mass e-mail…
Lots of Beer #5 (+8)

You can bet your Icehouse keg that President Gann is getting angry phone calls from alumni and parents about that one.  It’s not surprising that Public Affairs left it out in the e-mail, but it is strange that the e-mail is from “Public Affairs Office,” as if someone (Richard Rodner?) doesn’t want to stand behind it.

Anyway, expect to see some backlash against ASCMC in the form of increased security at parties, RA narc-ing, and difficulty when registering kegs.  In addition, Dean of Students will get some heat, and Trustee committee meetings will dwell on the issue for far too long.  Last year I wrote a post on the topic of beer at CMC, but it goes without saying that this ranking is based on widely-held misconceptions about CMC parties.  (On a side note, Preston Waserman ’11 thinks we can do better: “I really think with the right attitude we can get to top three,” Waserman said in his most recent Twitter.)

As for the rankings as a whole, they seem to indicate that not only did we drink more, but we admitted three or four more minorities and international students, got rejected from lots of jobs, fired a housing coordinator, and had slightly better weather.  Not a bad year.

Overall, I would say that Princeton Review does a good job of ranking the Claremont Colleges within the Claremont Colleges.  Yes, CMCers might drink more than Pitzer and the other 5Cs, but we’re pretty comparable to Pomona and pale in comparison to most state schools.  And yes, Pitzer has lot more “Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians” who happen to smoke pot than the other 5Cs.  But I wouldn’t say Harvey Mudd is truly among the least beautiful campuses in the country or that CMC’s beer consumption per capita is anywhere close to that of some Ivy League schools.

Here’s how the other 5Cs fared:

Scripps:
#4 Dorms Like Palaces
#4 Most Beautiful Campus
#19 Easiest Campus to Get Around

Pomona:
#14 Dorms Like Palaces
#7 School Runs Like Butter
#5 Great Financial Aid
#13 Least Religious Students
#1 Best Classroom Experience
#19 Best Quality of Life

Pitzer:
#10 Most Popular Study Abroad Program
#12 Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians
#19 Gay Community Accepted
#7 Lots of Race/Class Interaction
#14 Reefer Madness
#11 Least Religious Students
#11 Most Liberal Students

Harvey Mudd:
#7 Least Beautiful Campus
#17 Intercollegiate Sports Unpopular or Nonexistent
#15 Professors Get High Marks
#12 Most Accessible Professors
#18 Students Study the Most

But we rarely question the positions in government they go on and take up.  More often than not, we congratulate our own for their achievements without considering the implications of their jobs. We assume that they’ll be men of action and thought, rather than cogs in the government bureaucracy in which they serve.

So it is with CMC alum, Jordan Barab, CMC ‘75, who is acting head the Office Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). But with Barab, we have the opportunity to not only examine the implication of his appointment but also surmise what he will do in office by carefully considering his and OSHA’s history.

During the past eight years, Barab spent his time excoriating the Bush administration’s laissez faire labor policies from his blog, Confined Space. Left unexamined, of course, is whether those same labor policies account for us having one of the lowest unemployment level in U.S. history during the Bush years.

Among other things, Barab argued that the Bush administration was refusing to enforce OSHA regulations and statutes that allegedly would have helped workplace safety. He published scary (and utterly unfounded) statistics printed by organized labor.

More than 15 workers are killed every day on the job in this country and a worker becomes injured or ill on the job every 2.5 seconds. The overwhelming majority of deaths, injuries and illnesses could have been easily prevented had the employers simply provided a safe workplace and complied with well-recognized OSHA regulations or other safe practices.

Assuming that the figure is accurate, which it is probably not, there are many questions that just this paragraph leaves unanswered such as whether this figure is high or low relative to all time standards, and whether or not OSHA regulations have any effect, positive or negative, in decreasing workplace accidents. In fact, as the U.S. moves from an agricultural to industrial to knowledge based economy, the number of deaths have been declining every single year.

Like the minimum wage laws that lead to unemployment about lower level workers, the outcome of all these OSHA regulations is to drive up the cost of hiring workers, a policy which gives more power to the union members that have already been hired. If companies are mandated to spend millions to improve the workplace environment, they’ll be less likely to hire the workforce they need. People often price their lives differently and are willing to work dangerous, humiliating jobs for the pay off. Shouldn’t they be allowed to make choices about what they deem precious and valuable? (Just ask Carl Peaslee, illegal immigrants, or anyone who has ever worked a job from Craigslist.)

Barab is critical of the “president’s cronies” in his final blog post – a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, given that Barab worked for some of the most radical unions in the country, the AFL-CIO.  He decries the Bush Administration and the Republican congress’s efforts to repeal a costly, hastily imposed Clinton-era regulation that would have forced employers to cover the cost of employees’ carpal tunnel. (Just how do you tell if the secretary got her stiff hand from working on the job or surfing the internet at home?) The costs were estimated by some to be as high as $100 billion and earned the dishonor of being what U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO, Tom J. Donahue, called, “the most costly, burdensome, and far-reaching government regulation in U.S. history.” Even unions estimated that the cost of compliance would be in excess of $8 billion.

Don’t expect Barab to be persuaded that OSHA is a waste of money and beholden to the unions he formerly worked for. Barab, in the days since he became acting OSHA head, has promised that “OSHA is back.”

Back from where? And just what kind of OSHA can we expect from Barab? Here it is instructive to look at his record, but before we do that, it’s worth pointing out his Facebook (publicly accessible from here) where he lists himself as a fan of the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” and George Orwell. I guess that I read 1984 as a warning and that he read it as an instruction manual. Ah, sometimes you cannot make this stuff up. Given that even the liberal, left-leaning, former presidential candidate, George McGovern has come out against an effort to eliminate the secret ballot from America’s workplaces.

Either Barab hasn’t looked into the actual track record of OSHA — or worse, he just doesn’t care. Had he, he would see OSHA’s record of utter and abysmal failure which he should have recognized when he worked with it from 1998 to 2001 when he served as special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA until 2001.

After spending two years on a request from an employer about complying with OSHA from at home — now that’s speedy regulation! — OSHA finally responded and told the employer community that OSHA standards applied to those working at home as well as those working at the office. Public outcry forced them to reconsider, but that was after employers wasted an estimated $1000 dollars per home getting them up to OSHA standards and after it took OSHA two years to respond. All of this stopped more flexible work arrangements by forcing employers and employees to bear the cost of a stupid regulation. Many of those who were adversely affected were women, who wanted to stay at home with their kids and still have a career from their home office.

Not egregious enough for you? Let’s look at what happened in 2000, when Barab was also working for OSHA. Many CMCers will go on to work in the for-profit sector and like me, have aspirations of working on your own start up. At first, many of your employees will be paid hourly wages if they work on a new firm, that is, of course, until you all make serious bank when the company goes public, thanks to your diligence and hardwork. But thanks to OSHA’s unclear and silly regulations in 2000 which mandated that stock options be included in overtime pay, many firms just turned around and refused to award stock options to their hourly employees. It was simply too complex and not worth the legal hassle. It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to argue that some of the early programmers who were denied those stock options might not have been too incentivized to work their hardest on the new firms that had hired them. In the free lance economy of Silicon Valley, this couldn’t have been good for start ups looking for people to move through the ranks.

Of course, OSHA, being a government entity, doesn’t regulate one of the most unsafe workplace environments in the entire federal government, the totally wasteful, U.S. Postal service, which according to Reason Magazine, “accounted for 29 percent of all federal agency workers’ compensation claims in fiscal 1994. In the same year, it paid out over $521 million in workers’ comp, death benefits, and medical expenses.” Putting it simply, we’re not only paying for the 750,000 employees of the Postal service’s generous government benefits and subsidizing the whole government-run business, we’re ignoring the very real human costs that it puts on the workers out there who would undoubtedly be safer in competitive firms that had to compete on safety, wages, etc. for the best workers.

Now to be fair, Mr. Barab wasn’t around in 1994, but that policy is still in effect. Will he change it? I doubt it. To his credit, Barab was critical of the lavish display of attention when the shuttle Columbia exploded, decrying the double standard between the attention spent on astronauts and dead industrial workers who often get ignored by the mainstream media. He missed the lesson from this, of course. Space exploration is simply too dangerous to be left up to governments, and so, apparently is delivering the U.S. mail.

By forcing companies to pay more and more money to solve a problem that has been declining every year, OSHA harms the very U.S. workers it is supposed to help. The effects of not being able to receive a job due to regulation are difficult to measure, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t real. So you’ll forgive me if I wish Barab were just like all those other CMC alums right now – out on the market looking for a job.