Submitted by ParanoidAndroidUser t3_z41qtl in rva
So what is VCU's official stance on the world cup and their Qatar campus?
When I was in school, I feel like they were talking it up all the time, so proud that they had this little exclave of VCU arts in the middle east. Now there is a world cup stadium less than 1km from the campus, yet I have seen no marketing or social media posts.
Are they trying to downplay the controversy? You would think they would say /something/ but who knows.
Almost all Higher Ed is talk on social issues. Follow the endowment investments and you’ll see how much “values” mean compared to 8+% annual returns
Edit: worked in Higher Ed for 10 years, still believe in socially liberal policies. Just have seen how the sausage is made.
its not just higher ed.
It's anything that makes a profit.
Like most virtue signaling institutions. The men's soccer team were so proud to wear their patches, but then folded like cowards when it really mattered.
Their stance: 💰💰💰
Thought the photo would come through on the post, but I guess it doesn't with the post text.
Wow! I really didn’t know VCU had a campus in Qatar until just now. Thanks for the pic.
Looks like it’s funded by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development which is controlled by the government, so one might assume taking a stance against local policies could threaten their continued existence.
I don't know what facilities VCU has in Qatar, but wherever is there would have been built using labor from the Kafala system that did all construction in Qatar until it was banned in 2017. And even afterward just not paying people and a £1/hour wages persists in one of the richest countries in the world likely by the companies that VCU Qatar contracts for local labor to this day.
VCU virtue signaling about the world cup should be secondary to VCU being held accountable to its own involvement with labor practices there and people in the VCU community should be asking questions about how local contractors to VCU Qatar are treating their foreign sourced labor.
Whoever say picks up the trash, cleans the restrooms, if they have a cafeteria cooks in the kitchen, or is hired for construction/maintenance etc there isn't a native born Qatari citizen. How are they treated?
How is this any different than the Chinese labor practices? China has defacto slavery, there people don’t have free-will, and a portion is prison/re-education-center labor. The Unites States and the majority of Europe has taken the moral high-road, but we still outsource everything to slavery countries. It’s a perplexing issue, sort of like when we stopped calling people “Negros”, but still actively exploited them. This is all above our pay grade, as this is orchestrated by world leaders
A man in Nepal learns from a recruiter that Qatar is hiring. The recruiter says yeah you'll make the equivalent of thousands of US dollars working in Qatar. Qatari companies & the recruiters don't pay for your transportation, so you have to sign a loan that covers those fees, pays for you to get a passport, processing of your visa to Qatar, etc which could cost you a substantial amount of your salary.
After its all signed you are on your way to Qatar. Upon arrival the Qatari company takes your passport and gives you a worker ID card. Now you are tied to the employer, if you lose your job you are an illegal immigrant because you don't have your passport. If you complain or protest too much you can be fired which means you have 72 hours to arrange your own exit or be arrested, if you are found on the street with an invalid worker ID because the company fired you can be arrested for being in the country illegally.
So when the company doesn't pay you, you are left with little options. You can keep working without pay in the hope they catch up with their arrears, walk off the job and become an illegal alien, or protest and the company fires you making you an illegal alien.
And these issues are outside of the working conditions themselves. For industries like construction heat is a big concern. A heat stroke death on the job only counts as a fatality if you die on the job site, if your body lingers to life for a few hours after the heat stroke sets it, and if they make it to a clinic or hospital or bed Qatar doesn't count you as a on-the-job fatality. Qatar will say there were less than 100 construction fatalities but countries like Nepal have received thousands of their citizens in body bags. Heat stroke isn't an instant killer for most that die from it and leaves survivors with permanent organ damage that could make future heat strokes ultimately fatal.
Now there have been some reforms, its now illegal for a company to hold your passport and tie your employment with them to your legal right to be in the country, but if your employer does things old school law enforcement isn't going to come down on the employer. There are supposed to be labor courts, but enforcement & follow through is a work in progress. Qatar has shown off newer worker housing to Western media, but those same media outlets find other existing foreign worker camps that are way less sanitary.
In many ways labor in China is similar to labor in Qatar, and I'm not trying to dismiss China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Thailand, etc… working conditions & lack of human/labor rights. The way recruitment works turns labor into basically an industrial system of sharecropping because the workers are put into debt to have the privilege of working, it's practically impossible to move from a bad employer to a better employer even if your employer doesn't take your passport because your worker ID is voided so you can't be found on the street and you just lost your employer provided housing, bad employers can be really bad in terms of non-payment, living conditions, worker safety protections, sexual harassment/assault of female labor is an issue, and 120+ degree temperatures is dangerously hot.
It really emphasizes how most US Citizens are whiners & spoilt brats when it comes to employment. The majority of the world lives in poverty & defacto-slavery, yet we have people who have a meltdown because they can't telework & pet their dog now that COVID is "over".
People can have valid complaints about employment at a variety of levels without declaring some of them “spoilt brats.” One person getting their leg broken doesn’t negate another person getting punched in the kidney, or a third person getting slapped in the face. Workers are mistreated and abused in a variety of ways in a variety of severities, and calling out employers for pointless mistreatment is how terrible jobs turn to shitty jobs and shitty jobs turn to ok jobs. You don’t just stop trying to improve things when you stop being literal slave labor.
I was literally referring to the people on a few Reddit subs about the end of WFH, not legitimate labor issues. There's a difference in having a complaint about being stiffed on your tips, or being asked to work off the clock, and the boss taking away the free coffee.
And I was literally calling out that stance as bullshit. I don't work from home, never have. It's impossible in my industry. My wife does however, since Covid. You're acting like telework is just "haha I can wear my sweatpants to work now." That aint it. Telework has had, in her industry, zero effect on the companies bottom line. None. ie: There's zero reason to undo it. What it has done, is given my wife 2 hours a day, 10 hours a week, 40 hours a month, 500 hours a year of her life back that she would have spent commuting. That's 20 days, if you want to do the math. 20 straight days in the car, for no fucking reason. It let us pull our kids out of daycare, and saved us around $1000/mo in childcare expenses, because our son can come straight home after school, and our daughter can stay at home all day with her mom instead of being pawned off on strangers. It means one of us doesn't have to take the day off if a kid is sick, because my wife is already home. It means I can work overtime if needed, because I don't have to cut and run exactly at 5 o'clock to get to the daycare on time. We were literally able to buy a house because of the extra income available after they confirmed WFH isn't going anywhere.
So quit your reductive bullshit. WFH isn't just a casual benefit, it's been the single biggest monetary and quality of life change our household has ever gotten, and it cost her company the grand total of... being able to lease a smaller office space? So yeah, I'd be pretty irate if they irrationally decided to yank everyone back in the office. It's literally improved every facet of our lives.
WFH is great for some industries & professions, for others not so much. Did I say all WFH is bad? No -- if there was a way to WFH 911, I'd love that too. There's still no way to remotely cut the roof off a car.
Which is why First Responders would never have been put on WFH in the first place, and therefore wouldn't be those "spoilt brats" you're talking about that are complaining about it going away. You can dodge around and try to selectively identify "Most US Citizens" in your first statement down to one entitled worker in LA with no obligations who once tweeted about being mad she had to put pants on to go back into the office, but your original statement stands on it's own and you're not going to carve demographics off until you're back to being right about it.
You win - I get it. I thought this was the stark comparison between laborers in Qatar being run-over & killed by bulldozers on construction sites as "normal" and the minor whining of people having their WFH yanked or curtailed. No apologies, I don't really care about pleasing anyone on Reddit. Get back to me after you've watched a few people commit suicide or die over the holidays and then you can complain about your job. Over & Out.
I'm an OEF veteran, try again if you expect that first responder guilt trip to take. And again, bigger problems existing doesn't make smaller problems not exist.
> OEF veteran
Thank you for your service.
Sorry you hate your job, dude.
Lmao that can’t be real
Wow! Thanks for this!
I really wanna know why it says Burger King at the bottom. Like is this referencing a landmark on your way walking to VCUQatar?
..… vcu has acampus in qqatar?
My understanding is that Qatar built this center and invited a handful of universities to operate a small endeavor there. George Mason was invited for their law program, I think, and VCU was invited for their art program. My friend worked at George Mason when this first happened and he decided to work there for a few months. That's the only reason I know as much as I do.
I’ve been wondering the same! When I was a student they talked about the Qatar campus constantly it seemed like. Radio silence the last couple years.
Qatar has had a LONG history of human rights issues and VCU has never said anything. It’s so disappointing.
Exactly. The same way the virtue signalers in Hollywood and the NBA are silent about China.
BIG THIS. Remember when John Cena had to walk back statements bc there were concerns it could impact China box office sales?
Their stance has always been to say quiet and rake in that sweet government money. It is not like Qatar had a sudden change in opinion or policy here. It has always been this way.
I wish VCU would rather build tall than wide. They're stretched so thin you can see the capitalist gears turning through their superficial veneer.
Your first sentence of your first post is “So what is VCU’s official stance on the World Cup and their Qatar campus?” - How can you then say in this post “I don’t even necessarily want them to address anything”?
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What silence? Prison labor happens all the time here in the states. I don't think the US has the space to point the finger at any other nations, because its happened here since the beginning of time.
Idk man what’s your fukin stance? Not everyone has to offer a “stance” just keep your mouth shut
What controversy do you want VCU to address?
I don't even necessarily want them to address anything. It's just weird to me that they have this whole other campus and you would think it would be free advertising.
But if you are asking what the controversy is with the world cup, it's that the stadiums and massive amounts of world cup related infrastructure were built with essentially modern day slavery.
Modern day slavery? That's a bold proclamation, do you have data or sources for that claim?
Thanks for the information!
I heard that there's a McDonald's in Qatar too.
Should I post a question in r/VCU asking what McDonald's stance is?
McDonald’s isn’t a large publicly funded university
Neither is VCU Qatar..
It’s a campus of the largest public university in Virginia
Tylerjb4 t1_ixotq4u wrote
lol VCU all talk about social issues.