X Marks the Spot

Every cover-up or con game depends on a verbal stratagem that stresses most forcefully crucial misinformation.


Bunko artists entice marks via tales (cf. “The Sting” or “The Flim-Flam Man”). Cover-ups use cover stories to transform the unconscionable into new evidence of good faith and good work. Tales and cover stories focus attention on laudable actors, actions, and motives. They also distract marks and gulls from features that might undermine credibility.

Every oral or written account withholds information. The more crucial the information withheld, however, the more vulnerable the account to disconfirmation. The account’s greatest vulnerability will lie beneath the authority that the account-giver stresses most forcefully. Because most faculty accede uncritically to almost any authority, and because almost all faculty take the Faculty Code, Bylaws, and policies to say whatever an administrator or apparatchik or apologist claims, an account’s vulnerability will go undetected by all but the few faculty who have learned where to look.

Sometimes account-givers cite authority very quietly to give the impression that nothing is amiss and authority is ample. Consider the outcome of the faculty’s last nominations to the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC]. The Academic Vice President [AVP] announced her appointments to the FAC and accounted for skipping over someone who had gotten more votes than one or more appointees by noting that the code says that, normally, no more than one member of a department serves on the FAC at a time.

Let us work from the general to the particular. Any member of the faculty ought to appreciate that the “Normally” that begins the passage generally gives the AVP wide discretion, for every selection for the FAC is to some extent abnormal. This means that when the AVP pleases, she may “double up.” In this instance, one candidate who garnered votes was not really a candidate because she was up for promotion and could not serve on the FAC. Indeed, an existing member of the FAC whose departmental affiliation bumped two nominees from the faculty’s list should have stood for promotion in 2006-2007 but postponed for one year so that the FAC would not lose more than three experienced members. For that reason, the candidate who was passed over despite securing a greater number of votes would overlap with his departmental colleague for but one year due to a decidedly abnormal but not necessarily rare situation.

Once these considerations are taken into account, it becomes evident that the language cited by the AVP neither prescribed nor proscribed. The AVP made her choices. Then she quietly invoked inconsequent authority. Who caught her out? Only those who wanted to catch her out.

Quiet, subtle flim-flam is often hard to distinguish from confident, valid authority, so I cannot offer a sure-fire means for detecting pseudo-authority.


In contrast, when account-givers pound the table while citing authority, one may be certain that a trove of flim-flam lies not far beneath. An example of trumpeting of nonexistent authority should show what I mean.

Once the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] had commandeered a remedy prescribed by a hearing board – see “Kaleidoscope of Questions,” posted on this blog 20 February 2007 – it was nearly foreordained that the PSC would claim to be only following orders. In a communiqué to the Hearing Board, the PSC showed how it had adhered to the directives of the Hearing Board. The PSC knew from the chair of that hearing board that the board had protested that its remedy was not being applied, so language denying the devition was imperative.

Indeed, one need not have known any specifics of the matter to know that, if the PSC were merely fulfilling the recommendation of the Hearing Board, the PSC would not memorandize the Hearing Board that it was complying. The Hearing Board would recognize compliance. Because, instead, the PSC was not complying with the Hearing Board and knew that the Hearing Board knew that the PSC was not complying, the PSC had to camouflage its noncompliance.

This cover story did not confuse the Hearing Board, all five members of which promptly protested the PSC's subtrefuges. Fooling the Hearing Board did not concern the PSC. The cover story existed to fool the PSC itself and to fool anyone who might inquire into the matter thereafter.


Between nuanced chicanery [like the account of the selection of the members of the FAC in 2006] and bombastic deceptions [like the claim that the PSC followed the Hearing Board in 2003] lies trickery that ordinary faculty should be able to detect when they want to. Consider this sentence in a recent communication from the PSC to the Faculty Senate about PSC malfeasance and nonfeasance in 2003-2004:


"Throughout it all, we drew upon our familiarity with the Code and our sense of fairness to provide, as best we could, impartial and reasonable processes for all parties."



The trick in decontructing this sentence, of course, is to recognize what the PSC did not state. The PSC did not even claim to have followed or obeyed the Faculty Code, the contract between faculty and the university. Rather, the 2003-2004 PSC felt compelled to dilute their account to "drawing on" their "familiarity" with the code. Moreover, the PSC did not state that the PSC substituted its will for the command of the code or the recommendation of a hearing board. Instead, we read that the PSC parlayed its familiarity with the code and its "sense of fairness" to provide "impartial and reasonable processes for all parties." Please note the peculiar word order in that last-quoted phrase. The PSC claimed that the processes were impartial and reasonable – they were not but the whole point of deceptive rhetoric is to hide inconvenient truth – but could not even bring itself to say that the processes were fair to all parties.

I suppose it would be gratuitous for me to note that, if the processes in 2003-2004 actually were as fair, impartial, and reasonable as the members of the PSC could manage, senators who have excoriated the PSC's decision-making may rest their case, for the members of that PSC have admitted their incompetence.


Next – Yo-Yo Motions – If you would discern what Power Committees are up to, watch for contradictory rulings in identical instances or for initiatives that contradict interpretations.