Beyond the Confidentiality Con

What if even one member of the FAC challenged the Confidentiality Con?


What if I had refused to agree to confidentiality on the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC]? What gallows or hellfire would an adminis­tra­tor have invoked to bring me back into line? Would the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] have ginned up an “inter­pretation” of the Faculty Code that aug­mented the modest confidentiality articulated there­in? Would the Faculty Senate have been asked to re­move me [and would a compliant chair have entertained the motion]? Or would the Center for Health and Well­ness have supplied a note that I was too well to attend FAC meetings? [cf. “Animal House” http://imdb.com/title/tt0077975/quotes]

My answer to such inquiries is that it little matters what reactions would have been had I thought of this gambit. Had I refused to join the cover up, a few faculty would have learned that FAC confidentiality is far more a matter of expedi­ence, insula­tion, and/or cowardice than of any authority to which faculty have consented. Be­yond such minimal awareness, some faculty might not have continued to be suckers for any claim to con­fi­den­tiality. I’d welcome an in­crease in the number of Puget Sound faculty who ask by what right this committee or that administrator pre­sumes to conceal what attentive, en­gaged citizens of the campus com­munity ought to know.

I hope that some colleague will refuse to agree to the Confidentiality Con, if only to see if others on the FAC will negotiate. Suppose that members of the FAC re­stricted con­fi­dentiality to substantive matters. Suppose further that members of the FAC reserved their liberty to raise procedural objections. First, a member of the FAC might object with­in the FAC to pro­cedural deviance. If unsatisfied by the response within the com­mit­tee, the objector then might refer the matter to a committee, an administrator, or an ombudsperson.

Would the FAC be less likely to abandon the rules if FAC misconduct were more likely to become known outside the committee? I do not know. I do know that FAC misconduct has gone unnoticed and unremarked outside the committee due in part to professed confidentiality.

FAC members who sincerely believe that something other than the Confidentiality Con circumscribes them should be pitied as dupes. FAC mem­bers who realize how limited the circumscriptions of the code and the bylaws truly are should be recognized as conspirators. FAC members who know that confidentiality is a con game and who exploit that con game to hide their misdeeds should be despised as grifters.

What if even one member of the FAC disdained to be a dupe, a conspirator, or a grifter?