Year-End Review -- 2007

2007 brought the faculty and the university some welcome developments.



In 2007 the University of Puget Clowns gave some signs of improving on the master intellectual of our age, Yogi Berra. As we slouch toward 2008, let us remember some advances of the last year.

“You can observe a lot by watching,” Yogi is reputed to have said. At the University of Puget Clowns, “You can learn a bit by reading.” On 17 April 2007, a lawyer for the uni­ver­sity read the Faculty Code to assembled PhDs. She uncovered the startling truth that “personal and professional characteristics” [hereafter, P&PC] became an illicit criterion for tenure after the faculty and trustees banned P&PC from the criteria for tenure. [Please review “E is for Etiquette,” posted 20 April 2007 in this blog, for some details of the facul­ty meeting.] Many faculty who struggled to prevent removal of P&PC from the Faculty Code proceeded in the ensuing dozen years as if P&PC were still available. Now that faculty have been informed that they open the university to liability if they invoke P&PC obviously, we may expect them to hide their use of P&PC behind official criteria. Like Yogi, these recalcitrants remain convinced that the faculty didn’t really say every­thing they said.

Moroever, this year our own Professional Standards Committee [PSC] concluded that the text of the Faculty Code might be an excellent starting point for interpretation of the Faculty Code. This means that the current PSC, too, came to believe that one could learn a lot by reading, a proposition that would not seem very newsworthy at a liberal arts college. I take this for evidence that, as Yogi put it, “The future isn’t what it used to be.” A PSC read the code literally, and, having concluded that the literal words of the code disposed of an issue, told the Dean that she could not circumvent the code. No other reading of the code would have been plausible, but that did not stop the Professional Standards Cult of 2003-2004. [Please review “X Marks the Spot,” posted 24 March 2007, and “Yo-Yo Motions,” posted 25 March 2007, to see how the Professional Standards Cult of 2003-2004 ginned up alternatives to following directives in the code.]


If 2007 brought us a PSC that would behave legitimately, might a licit Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] be not so far in our future? Yogi would counsel us that “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” The Faculty Senate, especially Senator Emerita Juli McGruder, have for years pestered the FAC to obey the bylaws, which require the appointment of a chair as the first order of business of every faculty senate committee. Deans loathe reminders that the FAC is formally a committee of the Faculty Senate and of the faculty. It’s so much more expedient to preserve the tradition that the FAC operates as it – and often as the Dean – pleases. Pessimists may insist that “It's deja vu all over again” in that the FAC has yet to appoint a chair as the bylaws demand. Let’s have some New Year cheer: some senators give every evidence of insisting that the FAC cannot flout the rules and ex­pect faculty to believe that the FAC follows rules when it does not care to. The Faculty Senate, long a “big clog” in the UPS machine [as Yogi said of Ted Williams and the Red Sox], has spoken simple, literal truth to the FAC. That’s progress!

In another sign of progress, last February the Faculty Senate by one vote acknowledged recent mal­feasance and nonfeasance by university decision-makers. Yogi explained the Yankees’ loss to Pittsburgh in the 1960 World Series: “We made too many wrong mistakes;” the Senate by the thinnest of margins acknowledged errors. Senator Ostrom framed a resolu­tion so minimized as to be laughable whereby the senate would take responsibility for mistakes made by a recumbent senate and a rogue committee in 2003-2004. No one expected even that too little to pass. Once a secret ballot was called for, however, seven senators con­ceded what every informed, honest member of the faculty knew: “Mistakes were made.” Acknowledging the undeniable seems negligible to those unfamiliar with more than three years of denials, rationalizations, and untruths by which decisions and processes were defended. Those in the know, however, are aware of just how hard it has been to get decision-makers and their apologists to concede the indisputable. Maybe future committees and senates will make fewer wrong mistakes. That could lead to accountability to the faculty.

Decades of deficient accountability have made 2007 seem like a continuation of faculty woes, but there is at least one more bit of good news. The faculty’s silent, unorganized, persistent boycott of plenary meetings may also signify that more and more faculty see through farce and judge themselves too busy to attend. Yogi famously opined, “If the people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them.” So too with faculty. If faculty do not want to come to faculty meetings, you can’t stop them. Now if we can just get faculty to stay away from Fall Faculty “Conversations,” we may free minds by the dozens!