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The North Wind

The North Wind

The North Wind

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The North Wind is an independent student publication serving the Northern Michigan University community. It is partially funded by the Student Activity Fee. The North Wind digital paper is published daily during the fall and winter semesters except on university holidays and during exam weeks. The North Wind Board of Directors is composed of representatives of the student body, faculty, administration and area media.

PROFILE — Katie Buhrmann is a 2022 alum of NMU and the executive administrative assistant in NMUs Office of Institutional Effectiveness. She recently self-published her first book of poetry. Photo courtesy of Katie Buhrmann
Alumni Katie Buhrmann explores South Korea through language
Katarina RothhornMarch 28, 2024

Editorial: Student body speaks up

The faculty at NMU is facing a round of dismissals, leading many to question the financial decisions of a university with a employee policy resembling corporate business structure.

Fewer professors are being kept on the tenure track and more are being herded into the associate/adjunct area of mediocre pay so that the school can avoid cutting the big paychecks but still fill all the necessary lecterns with learned individuals.

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Students should care about faculty issues because of the effort students put in at the end of each semester to evaluate their professors – good or bad. We want to know that our feedback on our professors matters when considering job renewal and staff changes.

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These students are taking that involvement to another level, which shows how much students love this university and their professors – it proves that NMU is a place where you aren’t just a number in a lecture hall or a check to the university. We want to feel that we matter and these students want to know their voice matters too.

At the end of each semester students are given evaluation forms so that the university might gather feedback on how well professors do their jobs.

When a professor receives shining reviews, administration and the implicated departments should consider student opinions first. When this clearly is not the case, students should use their power to protest bad decisions.

When students care about faculty issues, and when faculty cares about student issues, everyone comes out on top.

Recently three students took it upon themselves to circulate a petition to tell administration how valuable English professor Jason Markle is to his department.

It’s exciting to see students raising their voices when they feel strongly about campus issues. Having a voice on campus, as each of us learned very quickly after joining the newspaper staff, is extremely important and ought to be something every student can take advantage of. This petition is a step in the right direction.

The North Wind lauds the English students who are standing up for Markle’s job and we encourage all others to use their voices to let administration know which professors are assets.

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