Confidentiality Cons

What confidentiality does the code or the bylaws authorize?


To learn how often claims to confi­dentiality are folderol or folklore, tenured colleagues need simply inquire, “Where is that confidentiality defined or authorized?”

With regard to the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC], confidentiality is most­ly a product of agreement among members of the committee. True, the Faculty Code may apply with particular force to members of the FAC, who are not to reveal what closed files hide. Beyond that admonition, the FAC fabricates the con­fiden­tiality that members then claim to prevent them from discussing whether the FAC deviates from the code or the bylaws. That is the essence of The Confidentiality Con.

It is by no means clear, for example, that a colleague on the FAC is barred from alerting the President or the Faculty Senate or some other authority if the FAC insists on breaking the rules of evaluation. Whatever co-conspirators on the FAC may think of whistle-blowing, some faculty may even think that a member of the FAC is ethically bound not to suffer procedural or substantive injustices in silence. This may be particularly the case when someone appeals an FAC recommendation to a hearing board. Members of the FAC who know about misprision(s) may have an ethical obligation to notify the hearing board or the appellant.

Matters regarding the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] are only a bit more complicated. The Faculty Code in two places explicitly confers confidentiality. Participants in a grievance hearing are commanded not to “…make public statements, directly or indirectly about the matters in the hearings.” Second, if faculty refer matters to the PSC for advice, the code promises confidentiality. [Please see the interpretation on p. 37 of the July 2005 rendition of the code online.] Each locus of confidentiality is clearly less expansive than cunning or misinformed faculty have claimed.

Perhaps colleagues on the PSC do not realize that neither bylaws nor the code con­fers the confidentiality by which they claim to be bound. Like members of the FAC who seem not to realize that almost all of the confidentiality that they invoke follows from voluntary agreement among FAC insiders, perhaps members of the PSC are suckers for folklore or victims of groupthink or grouptalk. I think it less likely that members of the PSC are illiterate.

Should we be concerned that so many colleagues who proclaim themselves bound by rules appear so ill-informed about what the rules actually say? That depends on which Confidentiality Con a colleague is running. Many who invoke confidentiality have themselves been conned by folklore and folderol. These poor rubes actually believe that they are restating the code or the bylaws. We should be concerned about what other folderol or folklore they will substitute for the Faculty Code. Many others, alas, know very well that mutual agreement to cover insiders' asses and to deprive outsiders of corroborating information is the mainspring of confidentiality. This more insidious con job should allay concerns that FAC or PSC members do not know the rules. At least some members of each committee had to learn the rules to cover up deviations from the rules.