(Chuck Muth) – Apparently the employees at UNLV’s “Marriage and Family Therapy” (MFT) department got the memo and power point presentation about emailing state legislators with sob stories about budget cuts.
OK, first, show of hands: How many of you, when you think about higher education, think of “marriage and family therapy” as opposed to engineering, medical school, law school, nuclear physics or economics?
Exactly.
It’s a non-essential program which should be zeroed out. If you want to major in “marriage and family therapy,” go to a private school, not our taxpayer-funded school. And if you need “marriage and family therapy,” go see your priest, minister or rabbi. Or watch Dr. Phil.
With that out of the way, let’s check the ol’ email-bag and see what the employees and students at UNLV’s “Marriage and Family Therapy” department think about budget cuts. And for brevity’s sake, we’ll just pull some blurbs this time rather than republishing the entire “woe is me” rants as we’ve done in the past.
Brianna Kolhoss, bless her little heart, wrote:
“I am a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the Marriage and Family Therapy Department. I have wanted to be a therapist since I was a little girl and am beyond thrilled that I get to live my dream. . . . Please think of me and the other students you are harming when you continue to cut programs like mine.”
Wanted to be a therapist rather than a princess since she was a little girl? Imagine what THAT Halloween costume looked like. (I’m sorry; was that sexist?)
Ebony Igeleke writes:
“Nevada ranks near the top of the nation with mental health problems such as divorce, yet ranks lowest in funding for mental health. Even those who seek and can afford these services may not be able to find help due to the mental health crisis that is universally accepted as a fact in our state.”
Much like the global warming clucks, Igeleke asserts a “universally accepted fact” that isn’t universally accepted at all. We here in Nevada are suffering an economic crisis, a budget crisis, and an employment crisis – but we are decidedly not suffering a mental health crisis.
What we really have here is a crisis of people blaming somebody else for their own bad choices in life and looking for sympathy instead of getting off their butts and doing something to make their life better.
Iggie continues:
“Studies have shown a strong link between therapy and a decrease in absenteeism rates and improvements in performance at work. In a right-to-work state, attendance at jobs can be critically important.”
Ah-hah. So we need mental therapy in Nevada because workers aren’t required to join a union in order to get a job? Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And does this mean that in states with forced unionism that showing up for work every day is NOT critically important?
Severely spelling-challenged student Laura Card writes:
“Personally, I moved to Las Vegas just this summer from Canada. I researched Graduate programs in the United States and found that UNLV best fit my needs and it has exceeded my expectations in training, education and experince. I have chnaged my entire life to enter this Master’s program knowing this is where I should be and ganing the best possible education I can. I have gone into debt and sacrificed my time and energy into this program with the goal of finishing it. It would be extrememtly disappointing to find out that I have changed my entire life for nothing. A whole year of my life I cannot get back.”
A whole year, huh? Yeah, that IS tragic. Especially when you’re the ripe old age of 20-something.
But you know, it sounds to me like the best lesson young Laura could learn from this experience is that life is FULL of disappointments. Get used to it. Accept it. Learn how to overcome it. And move on.
Or get some therapy.
But enough from MFT students. Let’s get to the real whining and bellyaching from taxpayer-funded MFT employees.
Richard N. Blair, Jr., Departmental Administrative Assistant, Assistant to Chair, Dr. Gerald Weeks, Department of Marriage and Family Therapy at the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs (yeah, THAT’S an essential position!) writes (using his taxpayer-funded Richard.Blair@unlv.edu email account):
“Presently I think what is most disturbing to me and need to be brought to your attention as well as the Governor’s is how these budget cuts are effecting the people of Nevada as a whole as well as me and others like me as individuals. I do think that they find easy solutions without thinking about the powerful damaging effect it has on those effected. Here are the stories I hear, although second hand of course and therefore may or may not be true, residents do hear them and wonder what are many of you thinking.”
Geez, Louise! “Effecting” the people? Those “effected”? This grammatically-challenged clap-trap was written by an employee at a school of HIGHER EDUCATION?
And here, let me share with you some stories which I admit up front may not be true. But, please, pretend they are, OK? Like this one:
“People getting cut from jobs or getting temporary cuts in salary in the educational area that are living in their cars, on the campus and not eating or affording medications because of this cuts and asking for us to do it again.”
Because of one-day-a-month furloughs, UNLV employees are living in their cars and not eating? Gotta call you on this one, Ricky. Name….one.
Mr. Blair continues:
“(T)he state still raises the cost retirement and health benefits, not taking in consideration also that the cost of parking in the educational area, UNLV in particular is outrageous. How can you continuously ask the lowest paid employees to continue to take temporary pay cuts and still be able to survive paying their mortgage, their car payment, utilities, and to eat! I’m a single person and I even have a medical condition that requires monthly medications, how can I continue to survive without loosing my home and my health, etc.?”
Please, PLEASE, make him stop! My head’s gonna explode.
“In regards to the departments like Marriage and Family Therapy when houses the Clinic that offers programs to get counseling out there to the community and producing future therapists for the country, once again the importance of small programs like this shows that you can’t afford to hurt these programs, like this one, the future of this country in its growth as a nation depends on it.”
I can’t take it anymore. I beg you; waterboard me instead!
OK, let’s move on, shall we?
Markie Blumer, Assistant Professor at the Department of Marriage and Family Therapy, wrote using her taxpayer-funded email account [markie.blumer@unlv.edu]:
“Mental health is just as important as medicine, dentistry, or nursing and needs to be equally valued. . . . Both our research and clinical work focuses on two very real issues in the state of Nevada presently – the effect of and coping with unemployment in families and ways to encourage ecological practices to promote family sustainability and harmony now and in the future.”
Encourage ecological practices to promote family sustainability and harmony? Can we bring Rick Blair back?!!
Here’s the thing, folks. Every bureaucrat and government employee of every program of every department of every agency at every level of government can rationalize and “make a case” for their existence and ongoing funding. The problem is that many aren’t programs the government should be involved with in the first place and/or just aren’t priorities.
They need to be cut. Period.
Across the board cuts are wrong and the easy way out. Some programs are high priorities and legitimate government functions and funding needs to be retained for them. Others, such as the Department of Marriage and Family Therapy, simply aren’t.
And people who think taxpayers are bottomless pits of cash who should have their taxes raised for such non-essential programs, especially in this economy, ought to see a qualified mental health therapist and have their head examined.
I never realized divorce was a mental illness. These college educated young people can teach me something new every day.
Ah, Mr. Muth, if only you had a brain of your own. I guess the attention you crave so much is satisfied by you and your ilk clinging to the same old ho-hum conservative views and spewing out this type of vitriol in a blog. But let me Google you and see how hard you fought against Bush’s policies that put us in the mess we are all in right now. Oh, wait, it’s probably Clinton and Jimmy Carter’s fault, right? And I guess you didn’t want to be a princess when you grew up. You just wanted to be Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh…or maybe Larry Craig. Hope that isn’t sexist. (I don’t want to mention John Ensign, what with all his marital and ‘payment’ problems.) Talk about someone who needs therapy….you should make an appointment before it’s too late. Better make several appointments. You will need the first few to spend time blaming minorities, gays, or whatever group is responsible for all our problems. Thank God big corporations and rich folks are all looking out for us. And hey, always be on the side of cutting university programs. That way, nobody will be educated enough to know how dumb your views are. But, I guess you can always hide behind Jesus like a good right-winger. Funny thing, I doubt Jesus was a republican. He seemed to like helping folks and not being judgmental. Hey, kind of like a therapist!
“Kris,” if you think I was a Bush supporter, let alone a Bush apologist, you’re even more ignorant to reality than I otherwise would have thought. And that’s saying something.
And it’s not minorities or gays who are responsible for all our problems; it’s mush-headed voters such as yourself.
By the way, I know for a fact that Jesus was a Christian. Try not to let your head explode trying to understand that.
You know for a fact that Jesus was a Christian? What fact might that be? Also it seems your microscopic brain has reached the point of no return, so the explosion is unecessary. Try to understand that
…
I know your a commited christian regardless of any puny such thing as reason and logic so the bible is probably inerrant to you.
Here are some facts you can smack on and chew, enjoy!
“The first thing the Bible tells us about Jesus is that he was incarnate. This incarnation means to be fully human in every sense – without sin. But he was a particular kind of man. He was Jewish. He participated in Jewish piety: circumcision and temple sacrifice. He approved tithing (Mt 23:23). He sacrificed at the Temple (Mk 12:41-44). He said grace before meals (Mk 6:41). He appealed to Mosaic purity laws. He wore a talit (‘prayer shawl’ required by the Law of Moses – Mt 9:20; Num 15:37-39). He claimed to come only for the “lost sheep of the house of Israel”. He never did anything that showed he rejected being a Jewish person.”
“Jesus was a perfect Jew. He did not break the Law of Moses or of God. It may appear that he broke the Law when he disregarded certain oral traditions. Many of the violations of the Law of which Jesus’ opponents accused him were not so real in fact. Jesus never disobeyed a directive of the Law of Moses or of God. More than that, He never failed to keep even the spirit of the Law. What he violated were known as ‘hedge laws’ of Judaism. They were invented by humans. The idea behind the hedge laws was to set up rules which would keep one from the possibility – or even appearance – of violating the Law of Moses. To the shock of the Jewish religious leaders, Christ broke these in order to show himself Lord over all man-made traditions and laws.”
“Jesus was totally obedient to God in everything. (Rom. 5:19; Heb. 5:8) He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark. 12:30). Yes, He lived by faith. But, He did not live by faith alone. He lived by works as well (John 17:4). Where all the sacrifices required by Moses failed, the perfect obedience of Christ succeeded. Jesus was perfect in obedience and works. He did not sin! This makes him fundamentally different from every Christian and for that matter every Jew or Gentile on the face of the earth and for all human history.”
“Much more than being a nice person who loved everyone and who did good things for people, Jesus was the only perfect human who every lived. He did what everyone from Adam through Moses to David failed to do. (Rom. 5:18,19) He pleased God in every way. (John 5:30, 8:29) He was totally accepted by God through works and not by grace. He did not need a mediator but he merited the right to Heaven through his own work. Because of this, God accepted him as righteous, delivered him from death and the grave and exalted him to the highest place in Heaven.”
“This is much different from being a Christian. Christians are those who realize they are not perfect (Rom 3:10-18), have broken the Law of God (Rom 2:23), and must have grace in order to be accepted by God. Christians understand that they cannot trust in their own obedience to be right with God, (Rom 3:20) but must have faith in a mediator to bring them to God and Heaven (Rom 3:22-25). Therefore, Jesus could not be a ‘Christian’ in any biblical sense.”
How dare you criticize students, and faculty, for fighting for their education Mr. Muth! Maybe if people we more educated we wouldn’t be in all these “crises” you speak of. At least these students, and faculty, are doing their best to help those in need. How exactly are you helping? By writing ignorant, mean, and judgemental comments about those trying to further their education? What a noble man of God you seem to be.
And talk about ignorance…Jesus was a Jew. Had you ever gone to speak to your priest, rabbi…or Dr. Phil…you would know that.
I would love to know where Mr. Muth has received his PhD, because he is clearly making irrelevant and irrational claims towards students thriving for higher education. Stating that the MFT program is unnecessary is completely uncalled for and does not help us in the budget cuts crisis but only takes us two steps back. I do not know who you are Mr. Muth and nor do I care. You seem to be an arrogant person who hides behind his egotistic, uneducated, and patronizing views. Perhaps you should schedule an appointment with Dr. Phil because you clearly are a joke!
MFT programs are necessary to the extent that they help people with emotional and psychological problems relating to their relationships. For those of you who don’t think this is important, I am sorry. The fact is, families and personal relationships are the foundation for society. Unhealthy families and personal relationships affects (note proper grammar) society on many levels, not the least of which is the ability of it’s participants to function effectively with others. As such, I do believe the mental health of our citizens deserves some respect as a legitimate educational program.
However, green sustainability and someone changing their life for one year is a little exaggerated as a claim to the State to continue funding of this program. Those of you who find this a valid argument are foolish and probably selfish. The economic state of Nevada is a more pressing issue. Cuts have to be made. Personally, I think those cuts should be straight across the board. Of course, I would be in favor of a federal flat tax, too, so yeah, my head is in the clouds.