Notes from Wed. 6/25 meeting (Next is Sat. 6/28)

We had a very productive meeting today, with lots of map ideas discussed and tasks taken on. Our next meeting is this Saturday, 6/28, 3-5pm, in Blegen 205.  Between now and Saturday, we are going to start working on the following few maps. For those who missed today’s meeting, it would be great if you could take up a task on one of these projects (I’ll list some possible ways to help out, or you can suggest other possible tasks)… 

1. a geospatial map about labor on the U campus
   • a) looking at wage inequalities between different job types (e.g., tenured faculty, adjunct faculty, grad instructors, administrators, unionized staff, part-time workers, student workers) 
   • b) and inequalities within job types (e.g., massive disparities between salaries of economics professors and of philosophy professors) 
   • -> rationale for mapping these: the amount they are paid shows the priorities of the university b/c how much their labor is valued. Also, connections with the “driven to discover” branding (research generally is valued more than teaching, and hence research heavy fields get paid more – and only more profitable types of research – So, we can unmask the ideology of free inquiry implied by “driven to discover.”) (*We had a rich discussion of this, but I didn’t take notes on it… Could somebody add a comment with more explanation of why we want to map this?)
   • Arnoldas and Amit are working on a database for wages (*Amit, can you comment with the link to the web resources you are using for this?)
   • Gus is going to look up dissertations on the Twin Cities and campus to see if anyone has done work on this already that we could use.
   • One task for this map and the rest is to find a base map of the campus (and the neighborhoods) – which we can use for GIS (*Lesley is going to contact someone about this – If anyone else has good ideas, look into it and let us know…) – (*Also, Gus suggested using some open source street maps for the neighborhoods – could you give us a link to those?)
2. “Driven to discover” map – (more conceptual) – a map of the world showing all of the corporations that use a slogan similar to the U’s “driven to discover.” (e.g., Oracle: “Information driven”; Fiat: “Driven by passion”) – Also, we could map some connections between these ad campaign and the corporatization of the university – (E.g., a history of branding at the U (the old slogans “commitment to focus” and “only at the U” – the Goldy Gopher mascot – branding of environmentalism on campus (“green washing”) – connections to corporations – e.g., CocaCola, 3M, Starbucks, D’Amicos, etc.).  (Check out this critique of the slogan: “Why I’m not ‘Driven to Discover’” by English prof., Joel Weinsheimer.)  — Anders and Eli (and Isaac?) are going to work on this map, starting with the above  inquiries, and other questions: how much $ was spent on the ad campaign?
3. Map of neighborhoods surrounding campus – (lots of possibilities here) – progressive resources outside campus that we could guide students to explore (suggested bike or walking trips to cool places?) – Also, give subversive history of areas near campus (e.g., the Bohemian flats (Gus is going to bring a book about this… *Gus, could you add a comment with the story you gave us in class?). – (*One big task here is to come up with a list of “progressive” places to put on the map – and to be sure that we think critically about what we mean by “progressive” (i.e., talk to activists who aren’t represented in our group) – Arnoldas is going to start on this).  *Also, big task of researching what history to show on this map (*Marie, Isaac, and Gus have given us some cool history already – could you add some of that in comments here? – Any other hidden history ideas…? (for inspiration, check out the “People’s History of Chapel Hill” on the bottom of the UNC’s disOrientation Map)
4. Map of steam tunnels under campus (possibly already some maps by urban explorers). (*Emily is working on this.)
5. Remixing a historic map – Lesley and Eli found some cool old maps in the Borchardt map library of the U of M campus… Apparently U of M map-makers were a lot more creative back in the 1920s and 1930s – they actually made some sort of subversive (or at least funny) maps.  We are thinking of scanning one of these maps and then rewriting some of the text to address our contemporary concerns, to unearth some forgotten history of the U, and to be funny- (*Diana is going to work on this – and others can brainstorm on this too (you could add comments to this post)).  —> Click here for PICTURES of the maps (sorry for the poor quality).    
6. War profiteers map – (Michael might have access to a map of military research connections in the Twin Cities).