Work

I have been working longer hours this week--didn't leave last night until about 11:45. But that is really not much, since a guy I work with put in 92 hours during the last week period.
We have been trying to get some generators ready to leave, and we are in a hurry. But we should be done this afternoon and then we can get back to what we normally do.

I missed the first football game last night (unless it was canceled, like all the previous games). Maybe I am just paying attention to the complainers, but it seems like things are getting worse. There is a breakdown between the students and the powers that be. Mutual distrust, dislike and each party caring much more about itself than the others. There are departmental power struggles, and bureaucratic complications. The students are cynical and selfish, and the conditions only add to that.
I read "The Big U" by Neil Stevenson last semester and for a while it reminded me of our great institution (then it got worse, and the similarities were not as striking). But it makes me wonder how long before the whole place goes down.
It turns out that the school is just a small, magnifying mirror of the rest of the country, and I just see the problems up close. But when a project is slowed down for months just because a department claims to have power, and many of the problems faced are not technical, but simply bureaucratic, it shows that something is wrong.

So, what is my reaction? Leave? Burn things? Work to change the system? If the system gets in the way, just quietly do what I want?

Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?