H is for Half-Assed

Between administrators and apparatchiks above and rank-and-file faculty below lie the tools and fools of the Faculty Senate.


Previous entries in this blog have covered the deceptions and delusions of rulers [e. g., administrators and apparatchiks] and the attention-deficit disorders of the ruled [except when more than $1.27 of their benefits or some empty praise focuses their appetites]. Between rulers and ruled the Faculty Senate occasionally surfaces: a dozen or so faculty perpetually in search of courage and purpose who perpetually content themselves with half-measures in service of their betters. Half-afraid and half-annoyed, the half-wits of the Senate form a halfway house of enablers always half a step from licking ass and faking aims.

The Senate meeting on 7 May 2007 revealed anew the canine pleasantries [see the entry on responsible, reputable, reliable faculty dogs] of senators. The Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] had flouted the Faculty Bylaws [hereafter, Bylaws] despite repeated notice from the Senate and elsewhere that the Bylaws mandate that each committee have a Chairperson. The FAC has no chair. It is fortunate for the FAC scofflaws, therefore, that the Faculty Senate has neither integrity nor intestinal fortitude.

The Chair of the Faculty Senate half-pusillanimously pandered that one passage of the Bylaws might be read to permit the FAC to report to the Senate despite its chairlessness. Good point, sir! If only O. J. Simpson had thought to point out how many Commandments do not proscribe murder!

Numerous senators reiterated their fidelity to the bylaws, then turned away from confrontation and retreated behind “Let’s make just this one exception for now.” Imagine that marines resembled faculty senators. “Semper fi!” would be replaced by “Semper flee!” “Gung ho!” would give way to “Gangway!” On the other hand, were the Faculty Senate the Marines, the United States would be out of Iraq: senators would have invaded Iceland in the first place and would have determined that occupying geysers was an important first step toward capturing the populace. "Today the spa; tomorrow space, the final frontier!"

The Academic Vice President [AVP] mumbled half-truths easily debunked by two veterans of the FAC, neither of whom cared or dared to point out that the interchangeability and equality of FAC members were truer by assumption than in actuality. One senator did note that such arguments, even if true, would be irrelevant. The Bylaws make no exceptions for committee Kum Ba Yah. The absence of an exception did not impress the AVP, who dismissed the rules as some "technicality." Yet another member of the Professional Standards Committee yet again transcends mere rules. As Peter Townshend might have put it, “Meet the new boss / The same as the old boss.”

All but two of the senators acknowledged what the Bylaws commanded, praised principle, and emulated Byron’s Julia: “And whispering 'I will ne'er consent' – consented.” Profiles in Porridge!

To summarize: the FAC continues ostensibly semi-cephalus; the Faculty Senate persists blissfully quasi-gonadal; the faculty suffer blindly pseudo-governing.


Next -- "I is for Inter-disciplinary" -- If a course or subject is said to be inter-disciplinary, it almost certainly is inner-disciplinary.