Quibbles

Nit-picking signals that our system is malfunctioning normally.


Some faculty get angry when our unaccountable elites claim that exposés are errant in some unspecified way. Quibbling does not anger me. It assures me that the expression of concerns is largely correct. If powerful people had more important objections, they would issue them.

Some faculty were chagrined when an administrator wrote that an article about faculty plagiarism in The Trail contained unspecified errors. I took this familiar quibble in stride because no one demanded or requested a retraction. Indeed, I chuckled at the cheek of the editors when they reproduced the trivial criticisms that The Trail had weathered: the article started from a mixed metaphor [A trenchant if mistaken critique!]; “serial plagiarism” was a lurid label [Should The Trail avoid terms used by The Chronicle of Higher Education?]; and so on. A repeat offender imperiled the reputations of a generous colleague and a credulous student [each a co-author of a plagiarized manuscript], yet our campus features folks ready to confront anything except serious violations of professional canons and ethics.

Of course, shams and spin deceive no one who does not want to miss the point or to overlook problems. When the Senate discussed faculty plagiarism, the minutes bowd­lerized “plagiarism” to “academic honesty,” but such lipstick did not be­come the pig. I am told that “multiple narratives” explain why a colleague who reported the serial plagiarisms became so disgusted with the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] over retaliations against him that he with­drew his grievance. May we anticipate a singular story about why no adminis­trator or other person in the know took up the matter? We have been told that the Faculty Ad­vance­ment Committee [FAC] “addressed” the matter, but we know not which matter the FAC addressed or even knew about. Amid uproar over faculty plagiarisms, the Facul­ty Senate appointed an ad hoc commit­tee to look into grievances [including the aborted grievance over the second set of plagiarisms]. By the time that ad hoc committee issued no find­ings about the plagiarism grievance or much of anything else, the tumult over faculty plagiarisms had become faint and quaint. Indeed, the ad hoc committee did not even in­form the faculty that the plagiarism grievant stated in an email to the PSC that he wanted to withdraw his grievance because 1) he no longer trusted the PSC to behave in a proce­durally or substantively fair manner and 2) he hoped that withdrawing his grievance would stop the harassment he had undergone since he had grieved the plagiarist anew. I guess the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Standards thought such matters to be of no importance.

Quibbles, euphemisms, and cover-ups followed by calls for civility signal all of us that our system is malfunctioning normally. That, too, is reassuring to everyone who is not vulnerable.


Next – “Respectable, Reliable, Reputable” – When reputations and rewards issue from administrators and apparatchiks rather than from critical faculty, respectability corrupts faculty.