An Apology for Conning Colleagues

Long ago, I should have informed colleagues that the Faculty Code and the Bylaws authorize far less confidentiality than is commonly believed and asserted.

I apologize for perpetuating the Confidentiality Con.

At the in­ception of the Ad Hoc Committee on Profes­sional Standards [AHCPS], two members of the 2005-2006 Professional Standards Committee [PSC] doubted the suc­cess of an ad hoc inquiry because, they claimed, the Facul­ty Code pro­hibits members of the PSC from discussing “cases.” [Please see the minutes of the Faculty Senate for 21 November 2005.] The two members were speaking casually and colloquially, and min­utes often paraphrase liberally. Still, I heard the PSC members reiterate the misinformation that the Faculty Code imposes on members of the PSC the strictest confidentiality.

As with most attempts by powerful committees to deny accountability and as with most communications from the Professional Standards Committee of 2003-2004, this "Confidentiality Con" is only partly true. The code actually states that no person involved in a grievance hearing “… shall make public statements, directly or indirectly about the matters in the hearings.” [Please see the Facul­ty Code Ch. 6, § 4, 3, 8.] Since the AHCPS arose out of discussions of a grievance for faculty plagiarism that never reached a hearing, it is hardly evident that the code pro­hibits members of the PSC from discussing that “case” or any other would-have-been grievance that never reached a hearing.

Perhaps the members overstated the prohibition because confidentiality has great­ly ex­panded over the years. Some mem­bers of the PSC or the Faculty Advancement Com­mittee [FAC] have naively accepted exaggerations of confidentiality. Others have inflated confidentiality to insulate them­selves from scrutiny. Either way, hypertrophic confidentiality has persuaded colleagues that they must keep secrets from colleagues and must frustrate faculty oversight. Those who wield the Confidentiality Con often fool themselves before they fool others.

Whenever protections of personal informa­tion are invoked to hide eva­sions of authorized procedures, confidentiality becomes a confi­dence game. Wittingly or unwittingly, credulously or cleverly, FAC and PSC members exploit the inability or unwil­ling­­ness to dis­tinguish be­tween substantive matters that truly are and ought to be shielded and proce­dures that properly are the concern of every campus citi­zen. Details that are private should be restricted to those authorized to consider such details. Practices and stan­dards that are public should not be obscured by those trusted to apply the rules.

From the beginning of my stints on the FAC, I knew that the FAC’s professed duty to keep secrets fol­lowed more from volun­tary agreement among those inside the FAC than from authoritative directives outside the FAC. Observance of duty has kept many personal and personnel matters as private as law or morality or the code demands. Overstating such duties has also kept members of the FAC from having to answer for de­via­tions from the Faculty Code, use of standards or cri­teria never authorized or no longer authorized, and assorted practices that hypertrophic confidentiality – the Confidentiality Con – prevents me from detailing or documenting.

I begin this blog, then, with my apology. I regret that I did not refuse to consent to FAC confidentiality beyond what the code demands. I should have assented to what the code demanded but no more.