G is for Guile

Rank-and-file faculty collude in fakery when they trust guileful communications.


The immediately previous entry in this blog argued that we faculty must assist fakery if various shams are to come off. The credulous among us are to an extent blameworthy, for if frauds concerned our own promotions or programs we each would be quick to de­con­struct ersatz communications. Concerning malfeasances and nonfeasances, we usually do not know because we do not want to know.

Even more blameworthy, however, are wily communicators, especially decision-makers who explain away or excuse their chicanery. It is a pity that colleagues become too caught up in their own careers, families, and affairs to be critical or even attentive. An expectation of lenient, lazy audiences for explanations and excuses has emboldened the guileful, who disrespect the analytic capacities of almost all faculty.

Consider a paragraph written by one or more members of the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] of the 2003-2004 academic year. That group responded to an empty motion barely passed by the Faculty Senate on 5 February 2007 within two weeks, a remarkable feat for a committee that could not hear a grievance within the 15 days that the Faculty Code mandates. [It was of course encouraging to learn that these colleagues could react quickly when they cared to.]


Given the passage of this motion, one might conclude the Senate had undertaken a careful investigation and found that mistakes had been made by the 2003-2004 PSC. Such a conclusion would be mistaken: the Senate conducted no such investigation. Nor did the Senate confirm the accuracy of the allegations against the PSC made in Senator Ostrom’s letter of November 29, 2006. In our opinion, the Senate passed its motion without exercising due process, without gathering evidence from all parties involved, and without assuring itself that it had received an impartial and complete account of events.

Let us consider each sentence in turn to reveal the guile of these special pleaders.


[1] “… one might conclude the Senate had undertaken a careful investigation and found that mistakes had been made by the 2003-2004 PSC.”

Someone who read the minutes of 5 February 2007 – minutes not yet ap­proved and thus not yet available to senators, let alone to others – might presume that the Senate had undertaken a careful investigation, if that someone were ignorant of Senate meetings and minutes from 3 May 2004 to the present.

As respondents knew or should have known, the Senate had been stonewalled by those who endorsed the response. The Senate had appointed two ad hoc committees to investigate, among other matters, perfidies perpetrated by the PSC 2003-2004. One committee found – as any impartial, complete investigation would have to find – PSC violations of the Faculty Code. Members of the latter ad hoc committee witnessed the abuse of the first ad hoc committee by apologists and apparatchiks, which may account for why that committee’s report [October 2006] featured no findings.

The response thus reveals a tactic that the PSC has cunningly deployed for years: spin trivially true but utterly misleading. True, the Senate could be said never to have investigated PSC misprisions carefully. The Senate did not do so; two ad hoc committees appointed by the Senate did. True, the Senate had not found mistakes after a careful investigation; the Senate did so after two ad hoc committees had found mistakes [albeit that the second ad hoc committee did not issue explicit findings].

Maybe the respondents used “conclude” rather than “infer” or “assume” or other more apt terms because the respondents so routinely leapt to self-serving conclusions in 2003-2004 that they cannot imagine peers proceeding more systematically. [In fairness, the response may have been a rush job to which erstwhile members of the PSC gave too little thought. Usually, the PSC takes its time before reaching thoughtless interpretations and indefensible decisions.]


[2] “Such a conclusion would be mistaken: the Senate conducted no such investigation.”

The key subterfuge of this second sentence has been debunked supra: the Senate conducted no such investigation but assigned two ad hoc committees to do so. The second ad hoc committee sought interveiws with members of the 2003-2004 PSC despite explicit warnings from two members of that committee to senators that confidentiality would prevent any member of the PSC from cooperating. [Recall from early entries in this blog that such statements are at best erroneous and, if members of the PSC are as familiar with the Faculty Code as they habitually claim, mendacious.]


[3] “Nor did the Senate confirm the accuracy of the allegations against the PSC made in Senator Ostrom’s letter of November 29, 2006.”

This is a “nondenial denial,” the technique Ron Ziegler made famous in Watergate and Woodward and Bernstein lampooned in All the President’s Men. The respondents do not specify which allegations, if any, they believe to be the least bit inaccurate. They do not deny the allegations. Instead, they dispute the procedures by which a majority of senators came to hear and to believe the allegations. [One should not fault the response for its nondenial denials. Most if not all of Senator Ostrom’s allegations cannot plausibly be denied, as the failure of the response to specify even one example should reveal.]


[4] “In our opinion, the Senate passed its motion without exercising due process, without gathering evidence from all parties involved, and without assuring itself that it had received an impartial and complete account of events.”

One familiar with the PSC cannot but marvel at the chutzpah of the PSC in this fourth sentence. Members who unanimously flouted the Faculty Code and due process on multiple occasions in 2003-2004 now charge the Senate with failure(s) of due process. Members who have steadfastly stonewalled senators’ attempts to gather evidence or testimony complain that the Senate did not gather evidence from all parties. The very people most responsible for the Senate’s having to work around uncooperative, unaccountable colleagues blame the Senate for proceeding with what little they themselves left the Senate. The PSC kills its parents then pleads for mercy because it is now an orphan.

This risible paragraph ought to embarrass every colleague who assented to it, but it will not because the PSC members have no audience before which to be embarrassed. How many faculty will trouble themselves to read the Faculty Code to discover that the PSC’s extravagant claims about confidentiality are folderol? How many faculty read Senate minutes, especially a response from a long-ago committee to a nearly meaningless motion? Among those who read the minutes, how many will be able to deconstruct the four sentences in the second paragraph, let alone cunning phrasings throughout the response?

To ask those three questions is to answer them. To answer them is to understand how workaday faculty collude in the acts of rogue committees and tyrannical administrators. Until more faculty participate in governance, faculty committees will remain unaccountable and, from time to time, unconscionable.

Therefore, let us not thunder at the PSC, "How dare you?" The PSC's audacity follows from faculty lassitude.


Next -- "H is for Half-Assed" -- The Faculty Senate goes off half-cocked unless it might displease administrators.