A message from the UC Oakland cloud just came announcing that there will be a Web Town Hall on UC Benefits on Friday, Sept. 24, 2010, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

UC leaders will host this online town hall meeting to talk with faculty, staff and retirees about post-employment benefits, health care costs, UC’s budget and other university issues. It is presented as an opportunity for faculty, staff and retirees to ask questions about UC benefits and share concerns.

That word “sharing” is beginning to sound like an insult and the medium of the message indicates it is too much of an opportunity. It will be a “live, interactive webcast” farmed out to a company called “ustream”. You log on, sign name, address, etc, so you are on yet another facebook-like crap-machine and can ask questions and submit comments.

What happened to the real live meetings where representatives of unions and associations are deputied to ask real UC members’ questions, ranked and organized, rather than have this sharing soup?